Brooks Internet Software provides a software IPDS printing solution, ExcelliPrint, that can take an IPDS data (AFP converted to IPDS by the PSF400) and save it as a PDF file; the PDF file is saved directly to disk. If you do not have a PSF400 license, you can convert AFP to PDF with IHS’s solution. The ability to convert AFP to PDF is beneficial for many reasons, including:

• Lower paper and printing costs
• Archive-ready PDF files
• Easily distributable and widely accepted PDF format

AFP Print Management

AFP (developed by IBM®) is a print management architecture that uses IPDS to interact with printers. Unlike IPDS, which is device-dependent, AFP is device-independent and object-oriented.

AFP uses the Mixed Object Document Content Architecture (MO:DCA) to define a document’s presentation. MO:DCA allows various data types, including text, images, graphics, and bar codes, to be incorporated into the final print job.

When a job is ready for printing, AFP incorporates the MO:DCA elements and then the AFP data stream is converted into an IPDS data stream by the Print Service Facility (PSF): the IBM software product that drives IPDS printers.

Even though the AFP data stream is device-independent, it becomes device-dependent when converted to IPDS.