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While doing research on the Xerox 7345 I ran across one of their claims to fame, which is scan2XPS. Never heard of it? Is it a big deal, so I did some searching on the net and heres what I found.

What is XPS?

The XML Paper Specification (XPS) format is basically an electronic representation of digital documents based on XML. It is a paginated fixed-layout format that retains the look and feel of your electronic documents. As a form of electronic paper, the XPS format provides a way in which you can easily create, share, print and save digital documents. Although XPS Documents can be easily created once you have the right software installed, just like the PDF, the XPS format is a difficult-to-handle format.

Interacting with an XPS Document is difficult because the format is primarily focused upon document fidelity, data accuracy, file size and compression schemes, elements that are important to generating high quality print output. Thus, XPS Documents can neither be manipulated nor edited easily, and can only be viewed on computer systems that have an XPS Viewer installed. As such, an XPS file is ultimately a final document format ideal for publishing, archiving and transmitting.

The format is now available and accessible from within all Windows applications. Of course, one of the keys benefits of the XPS Document is this integration into Windows operating systems, which makes XPS Documents easy to deploy. This allows all end users to take advantage of XPS technology and the document format simply by upgrading their software.

So, my question is WHY? When pdf have been the norm for years, why would anyone want to use XPS? Please help me understand better.
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I believe the answer lies with Microsoft. Correct me if I am wrong, but it is Microsofts
own versioning of pdf and is being used with not only scanning, but I recently had an IT guy try to set up one of my color units driver under XPS. Didn't work, I set it up TCP/IP and all was good. We'll be hearing more of this, especially as VISTA become more prevelant.
Right, this is a Microsoft thing, not a Xerox thing. It's supported (future models of) by Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, HP and Epson.

The main advantage of this is that XPS is embedded in the operating system starting with Vista. It actually uses XPS for its print spooling.

The XPS print driver is included with the OS so anyone can create XPS documents without the need to download additional software.
I still like Acrobat Smile
Agreed. This is just Microsoft deciding to go after Adobe and the pdf world, and being seriously late to the party.

And, I disagree with whoever wrote that text about pdf being difficult to handle. Anyone with Acrobat Standard and a little knowledge can do a lot to a pdf. Anyone with an application like Enfocus PitStop, well, you can do pretty much whatever you want to it.

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