Microsoft XPS

[ph33t]

Being a long-time Windows print and preview programmer and always on the lookout for new ways to print and preview code-generated documents, I was excited to hear about Windows XPS. This new document format is apparently used by Windows Vista internally when printing. Not sure on the details of what it does. Anyway, I've been planning a new print preview engine for sometime and have all but settled on PDF as the format. XPS looks attractive - a simple zip format that holds most XML pieces of your document. Thus began my adventure ...

I started by downloading the documentation. The documentation is available from Microsoft and is itself an XPS file. Great ... now I just need to be able to print or view the stupid thing. Easier said than done. I started by installing the .Net framework v3.5. Somewhere I read that it included an XPS viewer. It installed ok and even associated the .xps file extension with something. When I tried to open the document, I received a Firefox (my default browser) dialog asking if I wanted to open the document with "XPS.Document". That was the only choice available, so I said sure. The same prompt appeared again, so I answered the same way. After answering 3 or 4 times, I noticed new FireFox icons appearing in my taskbar. Apparently, Firefox was launching a new version of itself each time I confirmed. So, I canceled and closed all my empty FireFox windows. Back to the drawing board.

I searched Microsoft's site and found a link for their XPS viewer. The first one was "dotnetfx3setup.exe". This looks to me like a .Net framework installer. I just finished that, but what the hey, I'll do it again. It complained that the software was already installed. So, I downloaded "XPSEP XP and Server 2003 32 bit.msi". This installer wants to put "XPS Essentials Pack" on my computer. Sounds good to me. I ran it, clicked next, agreed to whatever license they put on the screen, told it to register the XPS extension with its software, overwriting my existing registration, it checked for required files ... AND WHAMO: "There is a problem with this Windows Installer Package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor".

So, I've given up for now. Would have love to check this out, but if i'm having this many problems just viewing a file, I can't imagine distributing this to any end-users. Perhaps someday they'll clean things up a bit. I guess I should have expected this as its come to be what I expect from Microsoft's development stuff.

[mindcorrosive]

Did you try open it in IE7 (earlier versions does not work, AFAIK)? I think they have support for this kind of files, but I'm not sure if you can get it to show anywhere else.. I prefer PDF any time, if only for its ubiquity..

[ph33t]

Oh, yeah i should have mentioned ... i tried dragging onto an opening with IE7 ... it says "Internet explorer couldn't open web page" or something like that. thanks though!