AFP-View is a Pagetec program that can be used to transform document files coded for IBM's AFP (Advanced Function Presentation) system, to Adobe's PDF format.

AFP-View was developed after a customer, who was using software that converted his AFP files to PDF, told us it was taking him over 24-hours to format 70,000 pages on a very large IBM mainframe. Obviously, he needed a more efficient process for generating PDF from AFP. In response to his request, we created AFP-View. Our customer was amazed and delighted when AFP-View ran those same 70,000 pages in under 10 minutes on a Windows PC. And, the AFP-View pages were identical to the pages produced on his AFP printer.

AFP-View can now handle Asian fonts, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Either Acrobat© or Reader© is required on your system in order to view the PDF files. If you have neither, you may use the download button at the bottom of this page to get a free copy of Reader© from the Adobe Systems Web Site.

AFP-View, under control of a user-generated style sheet, performs the required composition and pagination functions to produce high quality PDF pages, including page overlays.

Input Resources

Input to AFP-View consists of the following:

• IBM AFP File. This is the file normally sent to IBM's AFP processing system for printing on IBM printers.
• AFP-View style sheet for the document file.
• Optional family of overlay files when documents require the use of page overlays.
• Adobe Font Library.

Output File

Output from AFP-View consists of one or more PDF files. Multiple PDF files are generated when the AFP-View file-splitting option is selected.

Platforms

AFP-View runs in batch mode on the following hardware Platforms:

• IBM Mainframe
• Windows-based PC
• Sun Sparc

Bookmarks

Up to nine levels of PDF bookmarks may be generated for a document. Bookmark generation is controlled by the AFP-View style sheet, which specifies the lines and/or fields that define and are to be picked up for bookmark annotations. Unique colors may be specified for the bookmarked data.

Page Overlays

AFP-View provides for merging Pagetec electronic overlays with the textual matter composed for a document.

A page overlay consists of a page element that is common to a series of document pages. It can consist of any combination of text and graphics.

Page overlays are invoked by means of the AFP page-style codes contained in the document file. Each page style may use one or more overlays.

The use of Pagetec electronic overlays offers the advantage that a single overlay, no matter the number of times it is used in a composed document, appears only once in the PDF file. This reduces the size of the PDF files generated and composition time that would otherwise be required.

Pagetec electronic overlays are produced using Pagetec's Page Overlay Generation program, called PolyGen, which generates overlays as PDF elements classified as PDF form XObjects.

File Splitting

As a user convenience, the PDF file for large documents may be split into a series of smaller PDF files. The file splitting process, which is controlled by the AFP-View style sheet, can split files using one of the following rules:

• Page count – Divide a PDF file into a fixed number of pages for each file.
• Data content – Divide a file upon occurrence of a change in some data element, such as a customer account number.

Typographic Functions

• Data Alignment – Page data elements may be aligned left, center, right or aligned on a decimal point.
• Color – Page data elements may be formatted for display in any RGB color.

Page Generation Rate

An AFP-View run for the sample pages referenced below produced PDF pages at a rate of over 10,000 pages per minute on a 1.5GHz PC running under Windows NT.

AFP-View Samples

The AFP-View sample materials include the following:

• English
• Sample PDF Pages – Consists of the first ten pages of an 85,000 page job.
• Page Overlays – Consists of the four page overlays required for the ten-page sample. The overlays were generated using Pagetec's PolyGen program.
• AFP-View Style Sheet – Consists of the style sheet used to produce the sample PDF pages.
• Multi-Lingual
• Chinese
  To view these files correctly you must have Chinese traditional fonts installed on your system. Click here to learn about or install Adobe's free font pack for Traditional Chinese.



• Sample PDF Pages – Consists of a one-page sample.
• Page Overlay – Consists of the overlay required for the one-page sample.
• AFP-View Style Sheet – Consists of the style sheet used to produce the sample PDF page.
• Other Languages
  AFP-View can handle other foreign languages, including Japanese and Korean. Contact us for more information.