XML Paper System

I have a new laptop and have been configuring the additional tools and applications required to make it do a job of work. At the moment, I have no .pdf print driver yet and needed to save a web resource. I have Windows Vista 64 as my host OS and shall be running virtual box 32 bit guests. I was offered the fax driver, and the Microsoft XPS driver. I thought that PS would be some derivation of postscript, but it seems not.

I had discovered ixquick earlier in the morning, a privacy respecting search engine, and queried it using the search string “what application reads an .xps file”. XPS stands for XML Paper Specification and the Microsoft page hosting the application is fairly easy to find,

• View and Generate XPS at microsoft.com

What is not clear is that this page is .net 3.0 and Vista ships with 3.5 and with the reader turned on. Attempting to install the reader again issues some odd error message about the windows feature switches. Reading the Microsoft page more clearly makes it clear that the viewer is installed in Vista, as does the association on the .xps suffix with an icon. The download should not be installed on a Vista machine.

• This thread on Channel 9 at msdn.com,

makes clear that .xps docs can only be read using IE, although they document how to enable this for Firefox, it is an odd but interesting additional example about how IE is bound to the OS. In this particular example, I could have avoided all this ache by using the “Save Page as…” option.It seems I may need to revert to my more old fashion print solutions i.e. binding a postscript print driver to the FILE: port, or getting/buying a .pdf driver.