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 published on a variety of devices. The initial implementation was for a paper laser printer, which is why it became known as the print data stream. As the high-quality graphical PC display became available, IBM developed PC software to transmit the AFP data stream to the PC display, and thus AFP Viewer was born. The first IBM 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 will find a brief overview of the free AFP viewers (and trial versions) that I have found and used.

There are two types of AFP viewers: the Stand-a-lone, a comprehensive program that has many features and works similarly to the driver on an AFP printer. The other is a plug-in viewer that “connects to your browser, such as IE or Mozllia Firefox. This type has fewer functions and acts as an interpreter for AFP data.”

There are several free AFP viewers; I have 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, (free software)

BTB; AFPviewer, (free version, but put a watermark on the viewed page)

Jesse Yeager; “AFPviewer”, (free software)

Share; DocBridge Viewer, (1 year free license)

Barr Systems; BARR / AFP viewer, (30-day trial only)

ISI papyrus; ISISAFPViewer, (free) (browser plug-in),

MailProof; AFP Viewer / Proofer, (30-day trial only)

All AFP viewers take the AFP data stream and interpret this data in pixels for display on your monitor. Typically, this data is converted into the “dots” that the printer would print on paper. Each viewer, while displaying information visually, will differ in “view based on how the program was written” viewers “. This differentiates AFP viewers as some are displayed closer to the printed output than Others And not all viewers can display all AFP objects, so incorrect frames or characters may be displayed for data that the viewer cannot interpret.

The plugin viewer is browser dependent for many of its functions, just like any browser plugin. But these offer less overhead and only a browser “plug-in” installation. The standalone viewer requires a full installation of Windows and takes up a certain amount of disk space. There is an exception with Jesse AFPviewer: it is a single program, no DLLs and no installation required. This viewer is great for blasting from a USB stick and is 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. Exception here with the DocBridge viewer, you have to contact Compart and request a new free 1 year license (a bit inconvenient).

I found that when using these free AFP viewers, no two viewers will display the exact same page image. This is because of how the author of the viewer program implemented the AFP architecture in his program. Therefore, it processes the AFP data in a slightly different way, but correct according to the specifications of the architecture. This is also true for AFP printers as each of the manufacturers implements the AFP architecture with different scheduling algorithms. Therefore, you may want to use several of them to get a view of the data, as one viewer may display an object that another viewer cannot display, 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 from the AFP data stream. DocBridge Viewer offers the widest selection of file formats that can be viewed. The IBM Workbench viewer and Jesse AFP Viewer view various file formats, PDF, Tiff, and various other graphic formats. The other free AFP viewers do it in AFP format.

In conclusion, if you have a 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 often in a production environment it is expensive and time consuming. 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 changed in the conversion process and the fonts may change. The best solution is to view the AFP data in its original file form with an AFP viewer.