Aug
21
2008
From QualityLogic press release…
QualityLogic now offers its Application Test Suite-Intermediate Files (ATS-IFs) through its new QualityLogic Online Storefront. Using top-selling applications from Adobe, Corel, Microsoft, Quark and others, QualityLogic developed ATS-IFs to exercise each application’s print features. These application source files have become the industry standard for printer driver testing, and are used by printer companies worldwide. Now, IT managers can access these same QualityLogic ATS-IFs before they deploy applications, operating systems, printers and printer drivers to help simulate how new hardware and software will operate within their enterprise systems. This ability to test application file compatibility before deployment can save IT groups both time and money and ensure compatibility and proper image results.
Aug
21
2008
PageMark recently announced an agreement with Skycom to integrate XPS Rendering SDK and viewer technology for document. An excerpt from the press release is as follows:
Redmond, Washington - August 4, 2008 - Pagemark Technology, Inc., an industry leading expert in XML Paper Specification rendering technology, today announced that SKYCOM (http://www.skycom.co.jp), a Japanese developer and supplier of Internet, security and document management-related software, has selected Pagemark’s XPS Rendering SDK and XPS Viewer to be integrated into SKYCOM’s document management and print security products enabling support for the increasingly popular XPS format.
Pagemark’s multi-platform XPS rendering conversion SDK and viewer provides enterprise software developers with the ability to build XPS rendering solutions within a wide range of applications and operating systems.
“I’m very satisfied with the XPS rendering solution provided by Pagemark Technology, Inc.,” said Shoji Aratake, CEO and president of SKYCOM. “The XML Paper Specification format will play an important role in the future of document management and print security systems. Pagemark has always been an early visionary and leader in the area of XPS rendering and viewing.”
“We expect more and more XPS documents to make their way into document management and print security solutions,” said RanDair Porter, CEO of Pagemark Technology. “The XPS format is an open platform, built upon standard technologies like XML and ZIP. It is easy for applications and automated processes to generate XPS documents; and as a result, the number of solutions utilizing XPS will grow. SKYCOM has demonstrated its leadership in the area of electronic documents and security. We look forward to working with SKYCOM in the future.”
Apr
18
2008
EFI recently announced plans to demonstrate their latest Fiery technology with Microsoft® XPS support at DRUPA 2008. Based on their press release, the technology, developed in-house for working with XPS documents, provides consistent color management between XPS documents and their Adobe® PDF Print Engine (APPE) and optimizes document file size and document rendering.
This announcement is a good sign for users planning to incorporate Microsoft XPS technology into their printing and production workflow.
Feb
19
2008
The actually printed resolution of images from a Microsoft XPS document can be different depending on the producer of the XPS document. NiXPS wrote an excellent article on how to prevent images from being reduced to 96 dpi in the Word and Powerpoint.
While images can be embedded in the document at resolutions of 220 dpi, Microsoft’s “Save as XPS” tool unfortunately creates the page such that images are printed at lower resolutions. Using tools such as QualityLogic’s XPS eXaminer application one can look at the details of the document layout (called FixedPage markup in XPS terminology). I find it easier to use this tool rather than unzipping the XPS document and looking at the markup with an XML editor or Microsoft’s XamlPad.
Screenshot from XPS eXaminer
One of the first things seen in the markup is that the XPS documents are generated with a canvas render.transform (see below).
Page Markup from XPS Document with the RenderTransform
Without going into the details of the XML syntax, the render transform shown increases the size of the document by 33%.
This scaling apparently is done to compensate for the page unit differences between traditional printing which works in points (1/72″) and the native XPS page unit size of 1/96″ and allows the glyphs to be defined in point sizes in the XPS document.
While scaling makes it easier to define text in a manner common for printing, the negative side effect is that the image size and resolution are also scaled in the document by one third. Hence an image saved with a resolution of 220 dpi in the actual XPS document is printed at an actual resolution of approximately 165 dpi.
A solution to this issue would be to not apply scaling and define the glyphs sizes at the native XPS resolution. This is a change that would need to be done either by Microsoft to the “Save as XPS” and XPS Document Writer tools or in the future using an XPS preflight application.
Jan
12
2008
With XPS still in its infancy, it is important for early adopters of the format to be aware that how one generates the document impacts the final result. A case in point is with regards to converting Powerpoint 2007 documents to XPS. In a recent test, a PowerPoint 2007 presentation generated for a widescreen (16×9) was converted to XPS using the “Save as XPS” option in Office 2007 and the Microsoft XPS Document Writer.
PowerPoint 2007 Slide Example
The “Save as” option produced produced output similar to the results from PowerPoint.
XPS Document using “Save As XPS”
Producing the same document with the XPS Document Writer, however, required the user to be aware of the print dialog settings within PowerPoint and produced different results. Using the default print settings produced a cropped version of the slide, which was anticipated, but unexpectedly corrupted the output. The reflection under the logo on the left side was incorrectly rendered as were the two logo images. The text bounding box for the bulleted items was also visible.
Microsoft XPS Document Writer with default print settings.
Checking the “Scale to fit paper” option in the print dialog correctly fit the slide onto the page and resolved the rendition issues.
Microsoft XPS Document Writer with “Scale to fit paper” settings.
Given the number of features within XPS to produce excellent documents for printing or archiving, it is a pity that neither the “Save as XPS” option nor the XPS Document Writer take advantage of these capabilities. The limited options they do provide are also not consistent with the two creation methods. The “Save as XPS” dialog focuses primarily on the document structure and non-printing related tags. The Document Writer on the other hand provides image compression and format, and document interleaving options, both of which would be useful with the “Save as XPS” method. It is expected that once more printer manufacturers offer XPS native printer solutions and Office migrates to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the number of document creation capabilities will expand.
For software developers offering XPS output solutions, the results show that it is critical to test their implementations with different types of files under different printing conditions to ensure the best quality results.
As a side note, the “Save as PDF” in Office 2007 produced inferior and unacceptable output results compared saving the results with Acrobat 8. As seen in the screen shots below, the “Save as PDF” output incorrectly displays the logo and reflection regions.
“Save as PDF” option in PowerPoint 2007
PDF created with Acrobat 8
