The AFP format, short for Advanced Function Presentation (print), was developed by IBM in 1984 for high-speed, high-volume production digital printing from mainframes. This print stream architecture is a “presentation” format, designed to be played on a variety of devices. The initial implementation was for a laser printer on paper, so it became known as a print data stream. As the high-quality graphical PC display became available, IBM developed PC software to output the AFP data stream to the PC screen, and AFP Viewer was born. IBM’s first program was quite expensive and only ran on OS/2, so display was limited. As other vendors developed viewers and made free or demo copies available, the AFP viewer has become more popular. In this article, you’ll find a brief overview of free (and trial) AFP viewers I’ve found and used.
There are two types of AFP viewers, the Stand-a-lone, a complete program that has many features and functions similar to an AFP printer driver. The other is a plug-in viewer that “plugs into your browser, like IE or Mozllia Firefox. This type has fewer features and acts as an interpreter of the AFP data.
There are a number of free AFP viewers; I’ve provided a list here and a Google of “AFP viewers” will provide the current URLs for each.
Free (or trial) AFP viewers:
Ricoh/IBM – InfoPrint Solutions Company; AFP Viewer Plugin, (Freeware) (Browser Plugin)
Ricoh/IBM – InfoPrint Solutions Company; AFP Workbench for Windows Viewer, (Freeware)
BTB; AFPviewer, (free version, but with watermark on pageview)
Jesse Yeager; “AFPviewer”, (free program)
compartment; DocBridge Viewer, (1 year free license)
Barr Systems; BARR/AFP viewfinder, (30-day trial only)
ISI Papyrus; ISISAFPViewer, (Free) (browser add-on),
mail test; AFP Viewer / Proofer, (30 day trial only)
All AFP viewers take the AFP data stream and interpret this data into pixels to display on your monitor. Normally, this data is converted to the “dots” that the printer would print on paper. Each viewer, while visually displaying information, will differ in ‘view’ based on how the ‘viewer’ program was written. This differentiates AFP viewers as some display closer to the printed output than others. And not all viewers can display all AFP objects, so incorrect boxes or characters may be displayed for data that the viewer cannot interpret.
The plugin viewer depends on the browser for many of its functions, just like any browser plugin. But these offer less overhead and just a browser “add-on” install. The standalone viewer requires a full Windows installation and takes up a certain amount of disk space. There is an exception with Jesse AFPviewer, this is a single program, no DLL or installation needed. This viewer is great for blasting from a USB stick and very portable.
The “free” trial viewers expire in 30 days, which limits their use, and with any trial they want you to buy the full version, so this software borders on free. The other viewers are true “freeware” and work indefinitely. Except here with the DocBridge viewer, you have to contact Compart and request a new free 1-year license (a bit of an inconvenience).
I’ve found that when using these free AFP viewers, none of the viewers display the exact same page image. This is due to how the author of the viewer program implemented the AFP architecture in his program. Therefore, it processes the AFP data each in a slightly different way, but correct according to the specifications of the architecture. This also applies to AFP printers, since each of the manufacturers implements the AFP architecture with different programming algorithms. Therefore, you may want to use several of them to get one view of the data, as one viewer may display an object that another viewer may not, or in a slightly different way. And they are free so the cost is zero.
Many of these viewers not only display AFP data, but will also view PDF files, Tiff images, PCX format, and resource components of the AFP data stream. DocBridge Viewer that offers the widest selection of file formats that can be viewed. The IBM Workbench viewer and the Jesse AFP Viewer view multiple file formats, PDF, Tiff, and several other graphic formats. The other free AFP viewers do AFP format.
In conclusion, if you need to view an AFP file, downloading one or more of these free viewers provides a valuable tool in your work with AFP data. The only other way to “see” an AFP file is to print it and this is often expensive and time consuming in a production environment. The other option is to convert the AFP data to a desktop printer format; such as PostScript or PDF, and in many cases the original data format is altered in the conversion process and fonts may change. The best solution is to view the AFP data in its original file form with an AFP viewer.