Working with AFP Resources

The AFP resources used by the AFP2PDF Plus Transform include:
  • Page segments
  • Overlays
  • Form definitions
  • Character set raster and outline font files.

The page segment, overlay, form definition and font file resources can be passed to the transform from these locations:

Inline resource group
The AFP resources needed by the AFP data file are combined into a logical resource library for the document. This resource group is contained in the AFP file along with the AFP document.
External resource group
The AFP resources needed by the AFP data file are combined into a logical resource library for the document and are passed to the transform as a separate file.

The afp2pdf command specifies this resource file with the –r parameter. See Working with AFP Resources for more information.

Resource directories
AFP resource files can be placed in specific directories that the transform program searches for when converting a document. The user can specify multiple directories and the directories are searched in the order that they are given.

By default, resources are placed in a \resource subdirectory where the transform code modules were installed. You can specify other directories with the ResourceDataPath parameter in the transform options file. See Working with AFP Resources for more information.

Note: The directory and file examples in this chapter are specified for the Windows environment. To use these examples in a UNIX environment, use the UNIX file naming convention for any file name. For example, \font\maps in Windows is /font/maps in a UNIX environment, or the input AFP file c:\documents\afpdoc.afp in Windows would be /documents/afpdoc.afp in a UNIX environment.

The AFP2PDF Plus Transform must process the AFP fonts your document was created with to fonts that can be displayed with Adobe Acrobat. This means either mapping an AFP font to one of the Base 14 fonts that Acrobat has internally defined or embedding a True Type or Adobe Type 1/Type 3 font. Font Processing Options shows the available ways to process fonts.

Font Processing Options

In this section:

  1. Files Supplied for Mapping Fonts
  2. Process for Mapping Fonts
    If your document uses an AFP font that is not listed in the font definition file, if you have modified the AFP fonts, or if you have created your own AFP fonts, you must edit the font definition files to add the fonts so that documents using those fonts display correctly with the AFP2PDF Plus Transform.
  3. Using Custom AFP Raster Font Files
    AFP font objects whose names are not listed in the font definition files like csdef.fnt and cpdef.fnt are considered custom.
  4. Using Custom Font Metric Files
    The AFP2PDF Plus Transform can be configured with custom font metric files to control the placement of individual characters and to aid in text alignment. The transform uses the default fonts available in the PDF display application (for example, Adobe Acrobat) and applies special character widths as specified in the font metric file.
  5. Mapping AFP Fonts to Type 1 Fonts
    You can map an AFP Font file to a Type 1 font by specifying the font name in the Alias file (alias.fnt). The figure below shows an example of the mapping AFP fonts to type 1 fonts.
  6. Mapping AFP Fonts to TrueType Fonts, OpenType Fonts, or TrueType Collection Fonts
    You can map an AFP font file to a TrueType font, OpenType font, or a font included in a TrueType Collection by specifying the TrueType font name in the Alias file (alias.fnt) file. The figure below shows an example of mapping AFP fonts to TrueType fonts, OpenType fonts, or fonts that are included in a TrueType Collection.
  7. Using AFP TrueType Fonts
    When TrueType fonts are specified in an AFP object container, the AFP2PDF Plus Transform automatically extracts, converts and embeds a TrueType subset into the output PDF file.
  8. Using User Defined Characters within a DBCS Font
    You can configure the AFP2PDF Plus to process a double-byte character set (DBCS). AFP font characters from certain sections are converted, while the rest are mapped. The sections to convert are specified in the UDC_Range configuration entry. The Font resources containing User Defined Characters (Character Set and Code page) need to be placed in the path specified by the ResourceDataPath transform option.
  9. Character encoding
    The AFP2PDF Transform uses the Unicode character encoding standard to reference characters in TrueType fonts. If the AFP text is encoded in a format other than a standard Unicode encoding (UTF-8 or UTF-16), the text must be converted to Unicode during the transformation process. You may require new conversion tables that use the International Components for Unicode (ICU) function.
Parent topic: AFP2PDF Plus User's Guide