The recent release of the Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) beta has got me excited, not for the reasons you might expect. Yes, the HTML 5 support is decidedly funky (check out http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/performance/psychedelicbrowsing/Default.html) but what I like is the new printing architecture. (I’m boring like that.) To quote the IE9 blurb:

“To do high quality printing of HTML5, you need a high quality print subsystem. Internet Explorer 9 directly converts web content into XPS format when sending output to the printing system. XPS is a more modern print system with native support for features such as opacity and complex paths, which results in increased fidelity and quality when printing modern web content.” 

What is often overlooked is that XPS is not just an electronic document format like PDF. As part of the XPSDRV (the printing architecture of Windows Vista and Windows 7) it is also a spool format and a page description language. When an application uses the XPS Print Path rather than GDI, the new print path maintains the XPS format from application publication to the final processing in the print driver. This streamlined printing process is quicker and does not suffer from the degradation in quality that can be a feature of older print paths. Windows 7 also expands the range of applications that can take advantage of XPS printing.

So why do I care about this? The answer is that XPS plays an important role in our free PDF creation product. We switched from PostScript-based generation to one based on XPS in the last release. For most applications printing to our virtual driver, the switch is largely irrelevant, but some, including Microsoft Office 2007 / 2010, definitely benefit. The real advantage comes when an application uses XPS from the start to do its printing. A good example is Microsoft Publisher 2010 which uses XPS printing to guarantee print quality and colour fidelity, crucial factors in publishing.  With IE9 we are seeing a mainstream application taking this advantage, as in time more applications will do.

Back to work then looking at IE9, and I’ve just discovered this:  http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Helicopter/Default.xhtml. Simple but addictive!

Following the successful launch of our free, most comprehensive, enterprise level PDF creator, gDoc Creator (http://www.globalgraphics.com/creator), I am delighted to report on some of the reviews and write ups from media, Twitterers and bloggers worldwide.
Freewaregenius.com’s Samer (http://www.freewaregenius.com/2009/12/02/gdoc-creator-provides-pdf-to-word-conversion-as-well-as-word-excel-and-powerpoint-to-pdf-or-xps/) has driven a lot of online conversation around gDoc Creator and said: “For local conversions on your own PC, gDoc Creator is without a doubt one of the best free options available.”
Computer Business Review’s (http://www.cbronline.com/news/global_graphics_releases_free_doc_creation_tool_adobe_rival_011209) Steve Evans said: “Global Graphics has launched a free enterprise-level PDF creation platform, called gDoc Creator. The company is hoping that the disruptive pricing strategy will tempt users away from Adobe Acrobat.”
Daniel Robinson at V3.co.uk (http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2254310/global-graphics-sets-pdf ) focused on the useability benefits of gDoc Creator: “gDoc Creator can output files as PDF, PDF/A, or Microsoft’s XPS from any Windows application that prints, or convert existing files using a drag-and-drop user interface.”
Additionally gDoc Creator has proved popular in places as far flung as India, Germany and Italy with India-Server.com (http://www.india-server.com/news/global-graphics-gdoc-creator-tool-made-17417.html), Computerwoche (http://www.computerwoche.de/software/office-collaboration/1912137/) and Tuttotech (http://www.tuttotech.com/archives/3913/convertire-i-file-pdf-in-documenti-word-gdoc-creator) all covering the launch. Twitter has also featured a lot of chatter about gDoc Creator which you can find here (http://twitter.com/search?q=gDoc%20Creator)
We’d like to thank everyone for their continued feedback, conversation and interest in gDoc Creator and gDoc Fusion (http://www.globalgraphics.com/en/gdoc/). We are taking on board everybody’s thoughts and will continue to develop the gDoc family of products with you all in mind.

The 1st December 2009, and the launch of gDoc Creator 2.1. For software product managers like myself, the day of release is one that brings joy and apprehension in equal measure. Delight of course in the culmination of many months of hard work by many people, but you can’t help asking yourself some searching questions: Have we built a good product? (Well, yes, I’m confident that we have.) Will potential customers like it? (I think they will.) Will they like it enough to want to pay for it? That part’s easy: we made it free! Yes, a professionally developed product from a company with an enviable pedigree in the graphic arts market is available as a free download. We’ve gone freemium, the buzzword combining free and premium.

So, what is it that we are giving away? The product is gDoc Creator, a tool aimed at Windows users for creating PDF (Portable Document Format) files. It can also handle XPS and convert between the two formats. It can also create PDF/A-1b compliant files – PDF/A is an ISO standard for long term archival of documents. Not only that, it can convert PDF back to Microsoft Word format, invaluable when you need to do some serious editing to a document that you only have as a PDF.

Of course we are not the first to offer free PDF creation, but with gDoc Creator you get a complete package. gDoc Creator includes Add-ins that install into MS Office 2003 or Office 2007, providing a toolbar from which to start the conversion. But they do more; they can add value to your PDF by creating bookmarks from all the headings in the document or adding hypertext links to Contents pages, URLs and cross-references. Not unique features but hard if not impossible to find in a free product, until today.

And that’s not all. Installed alongside gDoc Creator is gDoc Fusion. gDoc Fusion takes a new approach to the tasks of viewing, creating, assembling and editing documents, an activity us knowledge workers spend a good proportion of our working lives doing. So a tool that makes that task easier, even enjoyable, is very welcome. Or as our CEO Gary Fry puts it: “gDoc Creator is part of Global Graphics’ freemium go-to-market strategy for gDoc Fusion, an easy to use desktop application designed to improve productivity. gDoc Fusion gives users fast and easy assembly of new documents with a simple drag ‘n’ drop action from a wide range of multiple document formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, XPS, JPG, TIFF and PNG. The product is designed to significantly improve knowledge workers’ productivity by automatically formatting a wide range of file formats, saving hours of manual cut and paste activity.”

gDoc Fusion, it must be said is not free, but even in its evaluation state it is a very useful tool for viewing and printing PDF & XPS files, integrating with Internet Explorer 7 or 8 if desired. It can even view Word, Excel and PowerPoint without MS Office being installed. As Gary goes on to say, “gDoc Creator gives immediate value to the corporate desktop. It also allows evaluation use of gDoc Fusion, demonstrating the ease of use and benefits of the full version. When an enterprise realises the productivity benefits of the full version of gDoc Fusion, it’s a very simple process to then upgrade.” And he’s not wrong!

We have worked very hard on gDoc Fusion to improve on-screen quality and performance, following feedback from a ‘soft launch’ six months ago. If you have already gDoc installed, you should definitely update as soon as possible, and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for? You can download the product from today; I hope you like it.