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I am writing this while waiting for a 200MB download to complete (we're off-campus with a slow network link) so I can install Microsoft's XPS Viewer on my boss's computer. He got an attachment from the Controller's office that's an XPS file. It's the first one I've encountered. My first reaction was to question the wisdom of using such a format for a general mass mailing, but since it's the Controller's office, I thought maybe I should learn a little more before spouting off. Is this the coming thing in order to support things like digital signatures? Some time back we were encouraging the University to support a central facility for mailable, editable PDF forms, but were told the University wouldn't do that because PDF is a proprietary format. I guess XPS is not proprietary in the same way, but at the moment it looks like there are no free viewers for Macintosh. I'm wondering if I should push back on people who try to use this to conduct university business, or if I should just suck it up and support it. BTW, it was the usual story in trying to download it. Downloading the XPS Viewer from Microsoft's site was easy, but when you install it, it starts to download the latest NetFramework without asking permission. If I need to roll this out to lots of computers, we need the full installation file. So I go to Microsoft's place to download NetFramework, and they lie to you and tell you you're downloading the file, which you're not. It's just a "bootstrap" file. It wasn't extremely difficult to find the full installation file, but it would be nice if they'd tell you the truth about these things ahead of time, especially for something intended to help you conduct secure communications. I know, I know, I'm playing a broken record which we've already heard over and over. John Gorentz W.K. Kellogg Biological Station