The Mars (code name) Project is an XML-friendly representation for PDF documents. Already an open specification, PDF is the global standard for trusted, high fidelity electronic documentation. The Mars file format incorporates additional industry standards such as SVG, PNG, JPG, JPG2000, OpenType, Xpath and XML into ZIP-based document container. The Mars plug-ins enable creation and recognition of the Mars file format by Adobe Acrobat 8.1 Professional and reading of Mars-format files by Adobe Reader 8.1 software.
There are many exciting use cases where the XML friendly Mars file format makes the construction of applications much easier by:
- Creating documents from databases or other enterprise applications.
- Assembling documents from components.
- Merging documents including structure, pages, and navigation.
- Extracting document information such as comments, structure, content, and images.
- Adding document navigation, interactive behavior, multimedia, and 3D content to increase document value.
- Decomposing documents into parts for storage in libraries, databases, or content management systems.
- Validating document representation, content, and structure.
- Creating and processing forms.
- Packaging sets of documents and coordinating their presentation and operation.
Update: Mars beta 2 was released on June 25, 2007. Get it now.