Add PDF to AFP Output

Question

We're trying to take a PDF file created in a web application and dynamically insert it into an AFP datastream on an IBM iSeries. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Answer 1

A better place to ask this question might be on Midrange.com. There are many people that I am sure can help you with that.

Answer 2

The short answer is not easily.

There would be two ways to do that. The easiest way would be to convert the pdf to a series of tiff images and rewrite the afp stream to include them as IOCA images. If they are two-color fax G4 compressed, they can be converted to IOCA group 10 without too much trouble.

The second way would be to convert the pdf to AFP (the two formats have a lot of similarities) and rewrite the AFP stream to include it. If the PDF doesn't have embedded fonts then you shouldn't have too much trouble mapping the fonts to the AFP ones.

It may not look quite right at first. AFP allows you to position elements much more accurately than PDF does.

Answer 3

I agree with the previous answer that it's not an "easy" task...

But if you are familiar with AFP structure (or at least willing to learn the spec) you can technically add single page PDF objects into AFP using AFP's Object Containers.

But the downside is that you'll need a pretty modern AFP print environment to actually handle AFP that contains PDF object containers. Most printers I've dealt with won't handle it.

So converting the PDF to AFP and merging it into the parent document would be best. Applications like Xenos.com's d2e Vision will do a nice job of this.

Answer 4

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