AFP – Advanced Function Presentation

Advanced Function Printing (AFP) / Advanced Function Presentation

Advanced function presentation (AFP) is a print data stream format used for high-volume printing.

The abbreviation AFP is also used by IBM as a shorthand for “advanced function printing”. In 1995, this was changed to “advanced function presentation”. The print data is converted to IPDS by printer driver software (IBM PSF print services facility or IPM info print manager). IPDS stands for “intelligent printer data stream” (see also raster image processor). An AFP viewer is required in order to display this format on a screen. An AFP data stream (AFPDS) consists of a collection of documents (MO:DCA, mixed object document content architecture) with text, graphical content, fonts and barcodes.