Overview AFP Designer

The Game Changer in Document Creation – Papyrus OverView AFP Designer

Antony Haslett
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There is the expression “can’t see the wood for the trees” and I feel this can be applied to the Papyrus OverView AFP Designer tool as so often its true functionality is overlooked as people focus on new tools, new features and new channels.

The Papyrus OverView AFP Designer was the first tool Papyrus created, and it quickly became a game changer in the world of document creation.

So where did Papyrus OverView AFP Designer come from and how has it evolved?

OverView AFP Designer was originally developed by Papyrus to give IBM OGL and PPFA users a PC GUI, which never before existed as all form design and page printing applications were created and maintained at the source code level on the mainframe. It soon became the industry standard as OverView AFP Designer is 100% compatible with IBM OGL and PPFA code.

OverView AFP Designer uses Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) at its core architecture and natively supports all AFP resources.

As a tool, OverView AFP Designer has been functionally extended to offer the following:

  1. Formdef creation that describes the physical page, e.g. simplex/duplex printing, paper tray selections for printing, the placement of logical pages on the physical page (N_UP), etc
  2. Data placement (PPFA) creates PPFA (Page Printer Formatting Aid) objects that format the data to be printed. Data is either printed on the forms that have been designed with the AFP Designer, or on existing forms created with OGL (Overlay Generation Language). Printing can be done on the Windows workstation and on the host.
  3. The AFP Designer package includes other tools such as Font Editor that helps edit and extend AFP fonts, Image Editor that is useful to edit and create various format of images into a page segment 

OverView AFP Designer makes it easy to build complex document and form print applications. Design document layouts from building blocks like images and electronic forms and automatically retrieve application data or spooled files from iSeries. You can easily design the final layout by combining data, forms, and images and then uploading all components to iSeries for production.

The Papyrus server module PageEXEC when integrated with the AFP designer tool can help in generating the AFP document for printing or viewing purpose. Although the simulation can also be done from the preview of the AFP designer tool.

Papyrus OverView AFP Designer can be delivered as a package incorporating all components or as individual tools such as the following:

OverView AFPDS Compiler enables the application developer to create ready-to-go AFPDS, overlays, page definitions and form definition printer objects on the PC without host products.

OverView Font and Image Editor provides a set of powerful graphical tools for creating and editing fonts and image resources that are fully compatible with the IBM Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) standard.

Papyrus also delivers Overview AFP Designer Papyrus for AS400/ iSeries, so if your tool for AS400 or iSeries has become discontinued then Papyrus Overview could be your serious tool of choice. Overview AFP Designer Papyrus for AS400/ iSeries makes it easy to build complex document and form print applications. Design document layouts from building blocks like images and electronic forms and automatically retrieve application data or spooled files from iSeries. You can easily design the final layout by combining data, forms, and images and then uploading all components to iSeries for production.