Understanding XPS

XPS is a platform-independent, royalty-free, open-standard document format developed by Microsoft that uses XML, Open Packaging Conventions (OPC), and other industry standards to create cross-platform documents. XPS was designed to simplify the process for creating, sharing, viewing, printing, and archiving digital documents that are accurate representations of application output. Using APIs provided by the Windows SDK and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, developers can create Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications that take advantage of XPS technologies.

XPS support, which is native to Windows Vista and later versions, allows users to open XPS documents in Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher and to generate XPS documents from any Windows application using the Microsoft XPS Document Writer. When you install additional features, some earlier versions of Windows can also use some of the capabilities of XPS:

• By installing the .NET Framework 3.0 redistributable on Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Windows Server 2003, users of these platforms can open XPS documents using Internet Explorer 6.0 or later versions.
• By installing Microsoft Core XML Services 6.0 on Windows XP SP2 or later versions, users can generate XPS documents from any Windows application using the Microsoft XPS Document Writer.
• By installing the Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack and Microsoft Core XML Services 6.0 on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003, users can open XPS documents in a stand-alone XPS Viewer application.

Note You can download these additional features from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads.

You can find detailed information on XPS in the version 1.0 document for this specification at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/downloads.mspx on Microsoft Windows Hardware Developer Central (WHDC). You can find additional news concerning this specification on the XPS Team Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/xps/.