NiXPS
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
EFI announces XPS capable Fiery RIP
EFI announced that they will support XPS in their next Fiery RIP release and they will demonstrate this at the upcoming Drupa show.
This is important news as the Fiery RIP is used a lot as RIP for a lot of, mainly digital, printing devices. (f.i. my local print shop has a Fiery RIP in front of their Xerox digital print machine).
EFI is yet another RIP manufacturer that announces XPS support.
XPS supporting devices are becoming more and more a reality, making XPS a viable format for office and digtal print work.
Read EFI's press release here ¶ 08:41 0 Comments
This is important news as the Fiery RIP is used a lot as RIP for a lot of, mainly digital, printing devices. (f.i. my local print shop has a Fiery RIP in front of their Xerox digital print machine).
EFI is yet another RIP manufacturer that announces XPS support.
XPS supporting devices are becoming more and more a reality, making XPS a viable format for office and digtal print work.
Read EFI's press release here ¶ 08:41 0 Comments
Sunday, April 13, 2008
NiXPS Edit v2.5 - Sneak peek (2)
Here's a screenshot of the first beta of NiXPS v2.5:
You'll notice a few new things:
First, a reworked UI.
It is our ongoing concern to keep the interface as clear, user friendly and efficient as possible.
The UI should allow the user to interact with the appication in a natural way. This means the UI needs to 'communicate' clearly to the user, and one way to achieve this is to reduce the complexitiy (less UI elements), but at the same time provide the user with the UI elements that allow him to do the tasks the software is especially developed for: editing XPS.
This led us to this design: the toolbar on top contains all the 'interactive' editing and manupulation tools.
If a user clicks one of these, he 'takes' the specific tool, and allows him to use it on the doc. This is reinforced with the mouse cursor that changes to the same icon as the active tool.
Page navigation, and zoom percentage modifications are moved to the bottom of the window, where they are easy to access, yet not taking too much attention away from the user.
The quick search box stays where it was: it is the most natural way to have it in the toolbar, as it allows quick access.
Second, you'll notice some new tools. The first two, select & move where already present in NiXPS Edit v2.0.
The third one is a zoom tool, which allows you to zoom to any spot in the file - combined with the unlimited zoom factor makes this feature very powerful.
The fourth one, the hand, is a pan tool - facilitating navigation when zoomed in.
The fifth one, the blue arrow, is a special one ... I'll take to you about this next time.
PS. This NiXPS Edit v2.5 is a free upgrade for all current and new NiXPS Edit v2.0 customers. ¶ 08:23 0 Comments
You'll notice a few new things:
First, a reworked UI.
It is our ongoing concern to keep the interface as clear, user friendly and efficient as possible.
The UI should allow the user to interact with the appication in a natural way. This means the UI needs to 'communicate' clearly to the user, and one way to achieve this is to reduce the complexitiy (less UI elements), but at the same time provide the user with the UI elements that allow him to do the tasks the software is especially developed for: editing XPS.
This led us to this design: the toolbar on top contains all the 'interactive' editing and manupulation tools.
If a user clicks one of these, he 'takes' the specific tool, and allows him to use it on the doc. This is reinforced with the mouse cursor that changes to the same icon as the active tool.
Page navigation, and zoom percentage modifications are moved to the bottom of the window, where they are easy to access, yet not taking too much attention away from the user.
The quick search box stays where it was: it is the most natural way to have it in the toolbar, as it allows quick access.
Second, you'll notice some new tools. The first two, select & move where already present in NiXPS Edit v2.0.
The third one is a zoom tool, which allows you to zoom to any spot in the file - combined with the unlimited zoom factor makes this feature very powerful.
The fourth one, the hand, is a pan tool - facilitating navigation when zoomed in.
The fifth one, the blue arrow, is a special one ... I'll take to you about this next time.
PS. This NiXPS Edit v2.5 is a free upgrade for all current and new NiXPS Edit v2.0 customers. ¶ 08:23 0 Comments
Friday, April 11, 2008
Convert XPS to PDF
A lot of people are looking for ways to convert XPS to PDF.
This is perfectly possible with our NiXPS Edit v2.0 application:
And of course we also offer this in our NiXPS Library v2.0, which allows you to build this conversion into your own applications.
Cross platform, and usable from C, C++, C#, Java, etc...
Update (28th of January 2009): PDF export is now also available in our NiXPS View v2.6.1 application, which you can download via our website. ¶ 11:54 2 Comments
This is perfectly possible with our NiXPS Edit v2.0 application:
And of course we also offer this in our NiXPS Library v2.0, which allows you to build this conversion into your own applications.
Cross platform, and usable from C, C++, C#, Java, etc...
Update (28th of January 2009): PDF export is now also available in our NiXPS View v2.6.1 application, which you can download via our website. ¶ 11:54 2 Comments
Monday, April 07, 2008
Vista use on the rise
According to the latest statistics report on internet connected computers, collected by market research company Net Applications, the use of Windows Vista has risen to 14% of all connected computers. In comparison: in the same survey about 7,5% of all connected computers are Macs. You can see an evolution in the following graph (pulled from the Net Applications site):
This is significant for everyone who uses, and makes software for, the XPS file format.
Vista contains an XPS Viewer, and an XPS printer (MXDW) by default. So a 14% market share for Vista can directly be translated to '14% of worldwide desktops are XPS capable'. This expanding ecosystem is important, as it is one of the key characteristics of the XPS format.
An ecosystem is important for any electronic document. You can only reliably use it, if you know that your recipient can view it. Similar for generating it; you can only ask your recipient to send you a file in a given format, if you can safely assume that it is fairly easy for her to generate it.
By 'riding on the back' of Windows Vista, XPS is ensured of an every broadening ecosystem, making it a more viable, and capable, electronic document every day. ¶ 08:53 0 Comments
This is significant for everyone who uses, and makes software for, the XPS file format.
Vista contains an XPS Viewer, and an XPS printer (MXDW) by default. So a 14% market share for Vista can directly be translated to '14% of worldwide desktops are XPS capable'. This expanding ecosystem is important, as it is one of the key characteristics of the XPS format.
An ecosystem is important for any electronic document. You can only reliably use it, if you know that your recipient can view it. Similar for generating it; you can only ask your recipient to send you a file in a given format, if you can safely assume that it is fairly easy for her to generate it.
By 'riding on the back' of Windows Vista, XPS is ensured of an every broadening ecosystem, making it a more viable, and capable, electronic document every day. ¶ 08:53 0 Comments
