I am a big fan of XFRX and today I got notification from Martin Haluza that the newest version was released. There are a number of speed improvements in the PDF generation and a few bug fixes which should directly benefit my customers, but the big news is the release of a new output type of XPS.
XPS is the new XML Paper Specification by Microsoft. This has been touted as a “PDF-killer” by some people, but I really don’t think PDFs are going anywhere at the moment. I just like my VFP solutions to offer integration with new technologies and Martin has done all the work that will make me look like a hero to my clients. I downloaded the Microsoft XML Paper Specification Essentials Pack since I don’t have the .NET 3.0 framework loaded on my development machine yet. The process was surprisingly painless. It installed the Microsoft XPS Document Writer (printer) so I can print from any application to a XPS file (not required by XFRX), and the XPS Viewer to look at and print XPS files (just like Acrobat Reader for PDFs). Slick.
Thanks Martin, and keep up the good work with XFRX!
