The XML Paper Specification, or XPS, is a file format designed by the Microsoft Corporation and released with Office 2007. According to the knowledge base at Indiana University’s Information Technology Services Department, it was designed to compete with Adobe’s PDF file format that has been the industry standard since 1993. Since the XPS format is newer than several versions of Windows, a driver will need to be installed on many computers before they can view or print XPS documents. This driver is offered as a free download from Microsoft’s website. Any computer with Windows Vista or later already has the XPS driver.
