Imaging News — February 2006
| Feature Article: | Customize Font Display in AFP Documents Using Font Maps |
| Announcements | AFP Support Enhanced Enabling Users to Customize Fonts (Read the Release) Support for HTML Available in Java Imaging SDK and web viewers (Read the Release) |
| Product Spotlight: | RasterMaster Imaging SDKs |
| Events | SWDUG, March 14, Dallas TX |
| DUMA, April 10, Valley Forge, PA |
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| AIIM, May 16-18, Phiadelphia, PA |
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| President's Corner: | Patents, Trojan Horses, and Time Bombs |
| Tech Tip: | Utilizing AFP Font Maps To Customize Font Display |
AFP, IBM's Advanced Function Presentation format, is ideal for displaying and printing documents with varied embedded objects. The MO:DCA architecture is object-oriented, allowing many different types of content to be included such as images, fonts, text, and more.
AFP files can be an excellent solution for a company that needs to process large volumes of documents that use repetitive information. Using AFP document objects (PTOCA, IOCA), templates can be generated to reduce file size, which decreases the time needed to load each document. Companies are able to overlay the template onto documents containing variable data and process large amounts of information each day.
In an AFP document, the fonts and styles are defined as a font object (FOCA). One drawback to using an AFP overlay is that use of custom fonts or missing font information in either the template or data can distort the presentation of the document. This can create unusable documents or delays in your process until the file can be corrected. As a result, companies lose productivity and, potentially, significant revenue while trying to correct the documents.
To avoid these problems, if their imaging software supports it, companies can create an external font map that overrides the information in the font object, allowing specification of exact fonts for their documents and templates. Font maps ensure that documents display correctly and allow administrators to control the look of documents. AFP font maps are simple ASCII files that can be edited by users to define their own font definitions including font type, point size, color, and style. Custom font descriptions can also be incorporated into a viewing solution directly without the need to call an external file.
Incorporating the use of font maps with AFP files ensures that documents will render correctly, helping to minimize lost productivity.
Learn more about the AFP file format.
Product Spotlight
Our award-winning family of RasterMaster™ imaging SDKs enable software developers to easily incorporate expert imaging capabilities into their product or application including: viewing, conversion, manipulation, annotation, printing, and saving.
RasterMaster supports AFP font maps allowing companies to customize AFP for display using simple ASCII files. AFP font maps are also supported in our entire line of imaging solutions.
RasterMaster is available for multiple platforms: Java, Windows, .NET, and Unix.
Request an evaluation of RasterMaster.
President's Corner
Many of our engineering customers, when comparing products such as ours, concentrate on features and performance. What organizations often overlook is the need to go beyond the technical features when determining requirements of a product and consider additional risk factors.
Companies need to find out that the product they are planning to purchase:
- Doesn’t have embedded code that infringes upon a patent or copyright
- Doesn’t contain a Trojan horse
- Has been tested and examined for embedded viruses or time bombs
- Contains certified-safe third-party code if it embeds any external libraries or open source code
We understand these concerns because we provide products and services to a great number of high profile, security conscious organizations in the financial services, insurance, document management, and health records arenas. These companies are entrusted with highly confidential information that must be stored and processed securely. They also typically serve thousands, if not millions, of people who are dependent upon their information being reliably accessible as well as private.
When these companies embed imaging technology into their products in order to view and manipulate documents and images, they need to have absolute confidence that their applications and data will remain safe. Unlike many others, we can verify the safety and security and ownership of all the code within our products. We perform our development within the confines of our own offices in order to assure that security. To many of our customers, this assurance is as important as the features and power of our imaging solutions.
Simon Wieczner, CEO