Tutorial: Creating XPS files on Windows XP
Problem Description

How do I create an XPS file on Windows XP?

Solution

There are two ways to create an XPS file on Windows XP:

1. via Microsoft Office 2007
   
2. by printing to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer
   

A separate tutorial entry is in preparation for the first (via Office 2007), we'll concentrate on
the latter: generate an XPS file via the 'Microsoft XPS Document Writer' - MXDW for short.

Microsoft XPS Document Writer (MXDW) for Windows XP

The MXDW is available to all Windows XP applications as a printer. This means that it is possible to
create an XPS file from virtually any application by printing to the MXDW printer.
On Windows XP the MXDW printer driver is not available by default, you need to download and install
either the .NET Framework 3.0 or Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack (and Microsoft Core XML Services).
More information about this, and installation instructions can be found on Microsoft' website on the address:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx.


Printing to the MXDW printer

As an example we print a web-page from the Firefox browser to XPS.


This is the print dialog in Firefox when the MXDW is correctly installed. Note that the Microsoft XPS Document Writer can be selected as 'printer', by doing so you'll create an XPS file with the contents you want to print.


The moment you give the command to print, a file dialog will pop-up asking you for a location to save the XPS file.
Save the file to a location of your choosing... done!

More information and tutorials here

Labels: tutorial create xps windows xp

  ¶ 22:44 0 Comments

  NiXPS beta program open for business For those interested, you can sign-up for the NiXPS beta program here.

This will give you early access to software; not only to the beta's, but also intermediate builds.

There's a mailing list for beta testers too, so you'll be able to share and learn from others. And you'll have the chance to share your feedback directly with our developers.  ¶ 12:15 0 Comments

  XPS explained and illustrated 'Dissecting XPS' is a series of well written and illustrated articles by Wictor Wilén on his blog. He gives a technical overview of the XPS format in a very accessible way. Head over here if you're interested in learning more about the format.

Labels: xps tutorial

  ¶ 21:32 0 Comments

  NiXPS v1.0 beta 1 released A new fresh release! With a fresh look and a fresh name.
It's been a while since last release, but that's because I've been very busy with setting up the company and, of course, a lot of developing.
I'm going to write more about the business side of things pretty soon.
Now the beta release; Yes, we go from 'XPS Workbench 0.2.0' to 'NiXPS v1.0 beta 1' in one go. A lot of new things, and the product looks more an more finished every day. New Stuff:

• Polished the merge and extract functionality: a cleaner interface and a lot more testing went into this
  
• Much improved inspector: get a list of the fonts and images used in the xps file, and look at the raw xml of every part if that is your thing ;-)
  
• Text search and replace: for the moment only working for strings that are not using a restricted and/or subset font
  
• A lot of ui polishing: recent files, better ui on both Mac and Windows, inspector per doc, etc...
  
• Been doing a fair amount of cross platform testing
  
• The software now checks to see if a recent update is available
  
• A windows installer
  
• And of course: bugfixes, bugfixes and than some more bugfixes
  

Check it out, and let me know what you think.

ps. The new logo was made by kristof at www.guidesign.be, I'm very fond of it and I hope you like it too...  ¶ 17:15 0 Comments