The next iteration of the Windows client does not support OpenXPS, although the operating system does play nice with Microsoft's own breed of the format. In mid-June 2009, the Ecma General Assembly approved ECMA-388, namely the Open XML Paper Specification. The fact that OpenXPS was approved as Ecma Standard: Ecma-388 1st Edition is a victory for Microsoft, because the company is one of the members of the Ecma TC46, the committee that pushed for the standardization of the format that can rival Adobe's PDF. Nonetheless, the Ecma General Assembly moved too slowly with the approval of ECMA-388, and support for OpenXPS could not be included into Windows 7, as in June 2009 the platform was evolving between Release Candidate and RTM. The Redmond company, along with the additional members of the Ecma TC46, debuted efforts for OpenXPS standardization in 2007.

“We don’t have any plans to announce at this time regarding support for OpenXPS (unfortunately, with the public Release Candidate already available, OpenXPS was too late for Windows 7) but Microsoft does see OpenXPS as a key foundation for the printing and document ecosystem and is very pleased to see the format emerge as a formal standard. We’re looking forward to working across industry to see how best to update the ecosystem to OpenXPS,” revealed a member of the XPS team at Microsoft.

OpenXPS is, much in the same manner as PDF, designed as a document file format that can bridge the gap between electronic paper and physical paper. Essentially, OpenXPS will make it possible for complex electronic documents to be transitioned to physical paper through computer peripherals designed for mundane use.

“This open and collaborative effort to standardize OpenXPS has resulted in a specification that effectively supports the advancements taking place in the electronic document world plus delivers greater interoperability as people view and print documents,” explained Craig Shank, general manager, Interoperability Group, Microsoft.

The Redmond company noted that the newly approved OpenXPS standard was not compatible with current implementations of XPS in Microsoft products. “Microsoft implementations validate against the XPS schema and therefore use the namespace URI to identify content when processing XPS documents. Microsoft implementations use *.xps and application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument to identify XPS documents. OpenXPS documents are identified by *.oxps and application/oxps,” the XPS team member at Microsoft added.