OhmyNews story on Mars now published

The Mars story is here.

I think this is a new phase in my reporting of PDF. I may have gone off down a sideline but it is still a significant space, as I see it.

Previously OhmyNews have published stories on open source for education and on open source graphics. There have been audiences for these so although this Mars story is a bit technical there will be some interest. OhmyNews manages to combine stories about culture and related technology.

Open Source Graphics Meets Quality Assurance

Open Source Challenges Vista at U.K. Education Show

There has been one comment already, from Thad McIlroy who writes a blog for Gilbane. I had found one post earlier but have now read another one explaining why Adobe is more interested in Apollo. McIlroy pointed out the slow rate of change on the FAQ as one indication. Even now a search on Adobe blogs finds not a lot on Mars. The most recent post is dated Jan 29th.

McIlroy links to a defining statement by Joe Wilcox -

"PDF's heritage predates the populist Web, and Adobe created the format for the purpose of mimicking paper documents. In the 21st century, however, digital documents are often containers that likely will never be printed. Paper’s relevance — and so the need to mimic — has greatly diminished.”

This seems to be the Adobe assumption. So Flash is the future, PDF not very interesting even with improved XML. My own impression is that paper is still around. Whatever Adobe and Microsoft marketing stirs up around the "rich internet", my guess is that Global Graphics will continue to promote XPS in a restrained sort of way but sustained over time.

This blog is about drupa so obviously is mostly about hard copy. The minimum aim is to cover the potential of XML as JDF and page description.

The websites have been updated less frequently as more energy is taken up with blogs. The scope becomes clearer. WWWatford is again about a destination for UK print, now merged with actual Dusseldorf in an imagined future. Not that far away actually. Acrobat Services dotcom may start to look at the video conferencing and so forth. Yes I realise this is a bit late but the whole launch of Acrobat 8 has been a mess as far as I am concerned. The information about Mars, requires 8.1, has been delayed and hidden.

Acrobat Services UK site will be about actual UK, not an imagined place. If I find there is still paper, I will write about that. If schools all suddenly switch from books to online animation that will also be worth reporting.

While checking out "Mars" through a search on Adobe blogs, I found this from John Loiacono, in a post about response to the Kinko link in 8.1.

"We have a long-standing, very supportive relationship with the print community"

A relationship is something that is refreshed over time. My impression from Adobe Live in London was that print was not really holding on to Adobe mindshare.