CIS 170F: Windows 7 Administration

Week 9

User Productivity Tools
Printing
XPS

XPS is a type of electronic document format comparable to Adobe's Acrobat (PDF) format. It lets any computer view and/or print the document without having to have the application that created it. If you select XPS Document Writer as the "printer" in any of your applications, the program's print function will create an XPS document file that you can then send to other people.

  • XML Paper Specification (XPS) is a document format that describes how a page should be displayed. An XPS document will have the same page layout when printed on any printer.

  • XPS is used as a document format for sharing files and as the format for spooled print jobs.
    Read more about XML Paper Specification (XPS) at:
    http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/default.mspx.

  • Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is responsible for drawing the screen output in Windows 7. XPS uses a subset of WPF commands to render documents.
    Read more about Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) at:
    http://windowsclient.net/wpf.

Windows 7 does come with built-in support for XPS. You can generate XPS documents simply by following these steps:

  1. Edit and format a document in one of your applications. Be sure to save the document in the application's native format, so that you can come back and change it later. You can't edit an XPS file.

  2. Use the application's Print function. Most applications display the standard Windows print dialog. Select the Microsoft XPS Document Writer printer. Click Print.

  3. When the Save the File As dialog box appears, select a location and name for the XPS document. You can now distribute the XPS document to others to view and print as desired.

Windows 7 and Vista have built-in XPS document viewers. On Windows 7 or Vista, just double-click an XPS file to open and view it.

Microsoft has created tools for viewing and creating XPS files on Windows XP, which you can get from www.microsoft.com; just search for "Get the XPS Viewer". This tool requires the .NET Framework, so you may need to download and install that program as well. On other operating systems, you will need to download an XPS viewer program from some other source.