OnDemand User Group
Support Forums => OD/WEK & JAVA API => Topic started by: Justin Derrick on January 22, 2019, 09:33:51 AM
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I've got a customer interested in replacing their existing AFP to PDF transform tool as part of a move to CMOD v10.1.
I'm just wondering what everyone's experiences are with AFP-to-PDF transform engines is like, and if there's one that's rated more highly than the other.
I'm aware of three off the top of my head...
- Ricoh - The old IBM Printing Systems AFP2PDF tool that was acquired back in 2007.
- Opentext / Actuate / Xenos - They've had transformation & indexing tools for as long as I can remember.
- Crawford Tech - A variety of tools for document transforms and indexing as well
I know there are other tools, like HP's Exstream and Isis Papyrus, but I'm under the impression that they focus on *production* of print streams, and not the transformation of existing print streams to another format.
Thanks in advance for your insight!
-JD.
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3 Scenarios I've seen. The last one appears to be the most common and plainless
1) Transforming from AFP to PDF, storing as PDF (We didn't care about storage sizes..)
Transforming Xerox to AFP via Infoprint XT, then AFP2PDF (We tried this with both the C version and Java version of AFP2PDF, similar results...Slow)
AFP2PDF to transform HP Exstreme AFP files to PDF (painless and quick)
PCL2PDF to transform PCL to PDF, then it used the CMOD PDF Indexer (painless and quick)
The indexing tool that we used to index the AFP files, was pretty slick and simple to use, and with the support we had from Ricoh they were able to build us custom filters, it supported regular expressions, etc. This was Ricohs AVE (AFP Visual Environment?)
The integration to our custom loaders and CMOD was a long drawn out process, but it worked. Indexing new reports became easier, but it took significantly longer to load very large xerox files.
2) Transforming from AFP/Xerox/PCL to PDF, storing as PDF.
We used Xenos 5.6 for this. This is an extremely outdated version from what I remember, but it worked and it was extremely fast as far as indexing. The d2e studio was very complex, and it was the most expensive option. I believe a lot has changed since then though.
3) Loading AFP files, converting on the fly with afp2pdf/ODWEK
Currently using the C++ version of afp2pdf on solaris to convert natively loaded AFP files mostly from exstream upon retrieval. Zero issues. We can also customize fonts and things via the out of the box configuration files provided by Ricoh.
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I last used the IBM Printing Systems AFP2PDF about 15 years ago, back then it was easy to install, and just worked without any care and feeding.
The last 6 years I have been using the Crawford Pro AFP to PDF transform, again easy to use, a few support issues came up in projects.
In each case, engaged their support team, and always had a fix without impacting timelines for production roll out.
No production issues with the product, regularly transforming 100,000+ documents per day for presentment.
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We use CrawfordTech plugin 1.2.9 with Glassfish app server.
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Starting from next week I will look to transform AFP to PDF using ISIS Papyrus. I will need to write like a webservice to run the afp2pdf conversion script from ISIS Papyrus.
I will keep you inform if it is "slow" and without problem, or not.
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Justin,
You left off TargetStream from your list. Another excellent choice for AFP to PDF conversion.
https://targetstream.com/products/streameds/
Thanks,
RR
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Sorry I've been away, right when this issue emerged.
Just like RJRussel, we also use Targetstream for creating the on-the-fly PDFs that users need.