Adobe PDF vs. Microsoft XPS

According to Microsoft, the resulting shift to XPS was driven by the need to evolve from an out-of-date GDI- (Graphic Display Interface) based printing path to a more modern one. Applications running on Windows versions up to XP and 2003 Server used GDI for drawing onto the screen and for printing. Designed more than 20 years ago, GDI was not a sharable document format and it has proven to be insufficient. It cannot, for example, support transparent objects, gradients or masked images. Sometimes these were converted into boxes that took a long time to print and printed as low-resolution graphics.