Here is an article titled Acrobat 8.0 and Content 2.0 by Robert J. Boeri talks about the content transformation taking place as Web 2.0 applications become more popular.
Since content is data, Web 2.0 portends a content transformation that we might call “Content 2.0,” with XML driving many of the changes.
Most of the Content 2.0 currently is driven by adoption of XML as the standard for representing data. Even thought XML is not perfect, it definitely is an open format (well almost – a subject for another blog). Here are some trends, you can see:
- Open Office uses ODF (open document format), a content format based on XML for storing documents, spreadsheets, presentations
- Microsoft’s current Office Suite, Office 2007 is based on OOXML, another open XML format for storing most of the content generated by office applications
- Microsoft’s XML Paper Specification (XPS) is another format that is likely to gain some traction
- FreeSVG from Texterity (which Robert refers to in his article). Its success seems to depend on the success of SVG itself
- Adobe’s new MARS initiative to represent PDF in an XML friendly format
It will be interesting to watch, which format becomes the dominant one.