The AFP format – short for Advanced Function Presentation (Printing) – 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 out put on a variety of devices. The initial implementation was to a laser printer on paper, thus it became known as a print data stream. As PC’s high quality graphic display became available, IBM developed PC software to out put the AFP data stream to PC display, and the AFP Viewer was born. The first program from IBM was quite costly, and only ran on OS/2, so viewing was limited. As other venders developed viewers and made free or demo copies available, the AFP viewer has become more popular. In this article you’ll find a short overview of free (and trial versions) AFP Viewers I’ve found and used.
IBM AFP Workbench Viewers only allow you to view and print AFP document but does not create AFP document, page segment, medium overlay, or overlay. To create AFP document, page segment, medium overlay, or AFP overlays, you are suggested to install the AFP Printer, which can be obtained from.
There are two types of AFP Viewers the Stand-a-lone, a full program that has many features, and functions in similar ways to the controller in an AFP printer. The other is a plug-in viewer that “plugs-in to your browser, such as 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 have provided a list here and a Google of “AFP viewers”, will provide the current URLs for each.
AFP Browser is a Office Tools software developed by Beta Systems Software AG. After our trial and test, the software is proved to be official, secure and free. Here is the official description for AFP Browser: BS Editor: Beta AFP Browser is a Windows application featuring a state-of-the-art graphical user interface, which can be customized to meet the needs of individual users. Users navigate at level.
Needless to say, Beta AFP Browser also features zoom functionality and can display multiple pages at the same time.