Free AFP Tools

This list of known free AFP tools available on the internet is maintained by the AFP Consortium as a resource for the international AFP community. The list includes viewers, drivers, generators, analyzers, resource managers, libraries and GitHub projects. Free trials of non-free products are not included.

The AFP Consortium does not endorse or warrant any of these tools. Users are responsible for evaluating the suitability and security of any tool for their own environment.

Viewers
Papyrus AFP Viewer – Papyrus Software
https://www.isis-papyrus.com/e15/pages/software/afp-viewer.html
Tool's description: “The industry standard tool for viewing and printing AFP files with unprecedented quality and processing speed. True WYSIWYG results.“
Registration is required.

AFP Workbench Viewer for Windows – Ricoh
https://dl.ricohsoftware.com/no_charge_request
Tool's description: “This is a stand-alone windows application that you can use to view AFP files.”
NOTE: This viewer was in the past an IBM product, however, IBM no longer maintains it; it is now maintained and enhanced by Ricoh.
Registration is required.

M/View for AFP – kühn & weyh Software GmbH
https://kwsoft.com/series-m/omnichannel-output-management-with-m-oms/m-view-for-afp/
Tool's description: “The AFP-Viewer of the Serie M/ – also available for free download”
Registration is required. Portable (does not require installation).

AFPviewer – CompulsiveCode
https://www.compulsivecode.com/Project_AFPviewer.aspx
Tool's description: “This is an AFP viewer I started writing a long time ago. With the help of the AFP community testing and reporting feedback, it has progressed quite a bit since 2003. “ (Note: It was last updated in March 2025)
Portable (does not require installation); for example, this can be used when remotely logged into a machine.

AFP Plug-In Viewer for Windows – Ricoh
https://dl.ricohsoftware.com/no_charge_request
Tool's description: “The AFP Plug-In Viewer is only compatible with browsers that support user plug-ins. If you are running a modern browser that does not support user plug-ins, then please use the AFP Workbench Viewer stand-alone version of the program.”
Registration is required.

Drivers
AFP Print Driver for Windows – Ricoh
https://dl.ricohsoftware.com/no_charge_request
Tool's description: “This is a Windows Printer Driver that outputs AFP.”
NOTE: This driver was in the past an IBM product, however, IBM no longer maintains it; it is now maintained by Ricoh.
Registration is required.

Generators
Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) – Apache XML Graphics Project
https://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/
Tool's description: “Apache™ FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) is a print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO) and an output independent formatter. It is a Java application that reads a formatting object (FO) tree and renders the resulting pages to a specified output. Output formats currently supported include PDF, PS, PCL, AFP, XML (area tree representation), Print, AWT and PNG, and to a lesser extent, RTF and TXT. The primary output target is PDF.”
NOTES:

There are over 3200 words about AFP support at the Output formats link above.
A sister tool to FOP is the FO Designer tool, a “WYSIWYG like editor (what you see is what you get) to create XSL-FO files to be used with Apache FOP.” It is found at
https://www.java4less.com/fopdesigner/fodesigner.php

Analyzers
AFPexplorer – CompulsiveCode
https://www.compulsivecode.com/Project_AFPexplorer.aspx
Tool's description: “This program was written to help me write other programs for working with AFP files. I use this program whenever I am doing low-level AFP development. It lists all structured fields, and all values (to the best of my knowledge). Also, I've recently added the ability to render objects, and a built-in hex-editor.“
Portable (does not require installation); for example, this can be used when remotely logged into a machine.

Resource Managers
AFP Resource Installer – Ricoh
https://dl.ricohsoftware.com/no_charge_request
Tool's description: “Manages resource files that you need for color and monochrome printing. Lets you install AFP resources to and from folders and directories on your local system and remote systems.“
Registration is required.

Libraries
PrintBuilder – CompulsiveCode
https://www.compulsivecode.com/Project_PrintBuilder.aspx
Tool's description: “This is a .Net library that provides an API for composing AFP print files. A UI tool is also included to demonstrate how to compose a basic AFP print file using the DLL.“
UI is portable (does not require installation); for example, this can be used when remotely logged into a machine.

GitHub projects
Alpheus AFP Parser – afpdev in GitHub
https://github.com/afpdev/alpheusafpparser
Tool's description: “Alpheus AFP Parser is a library and parser for the IBM Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) document/print stream format.
Alpheus covers all AFP specifications: MO:DCA, BCOCA, CMOCA, FOCA, GOCA, IOCA, and PTOCA. It is a complete implementation. Every Structured Field, Repeating Group, and Triplet is fully implemented as Java class. Alpheus AFP Parser was written from scratch and has no external dependencies.”

Hercules AFP Editor – afpdev in GitHub
https://github.com/afpdev/herculesafpeditor
Tool's description: “Editor for IBM Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) files written in java.”

Parse::AFP – audreyt (Audrey Tang) in GitHub
https://github.com/audreyt/parse-afp
Tool's description: “This module processes IBM's AFP (Advanced Function Printing) files into an object hierarchy; each object may be individually modified, dumped into binary, or written back to another AFP file.”

QXSched IBM AFP data stream library – Cenz (Vincenzo Zocca) in GitHub
https://github.com/Cenz/org.qxsched.doc.afp
Tool's description: “This library provides a framework for parsing and generating IBM AFP data stream files. It's current state is 'good enough for simple operations'.
The library can dump AFP records as text files. Already implemented records have are clearly described. Not yet implemented records are simple byte dumps.
Also supported is a dump of MD5 sums of records which allows the comparison of AFP data streams.”

AFP_pdf_to_afp – jpeeters-arch (Jan Peeters) in GitHub
https://github.com/jpeeters-arch/AFP_pdf_to_afp
Tool's description: “This java code splits a pdf file in a pdf per page and then embeds these pages into an afp file.”

afp – mdneale (Matthew Neale) in GitHub
https://github.com/mdneale/afp
Tool's description: “Python package and utilities for reading AFP (Advanced Function Presentation) files.”

afplib – yan74 (Yan Hackl-Feldbusch) in GitHub
https://github.com/yan74/afplib
Tool's description: “JAVA Library for reading & writing AFP (Advanced Function Presentation) Files.
afplib provides a low level API to transform AFP files, i.e. structured fields, triplets, ... into JAVA objects and vice versa. To make use of it you need to know MO:DCA. afplib is built on top of EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework).”

Suggested updates?
This list is intended to serve as an ongoing resource for the AFP community. If you know of a free AFP tool that should be added, or have a correction or update to an existing listing, please submit it here: