AFP Consortium

The AFP Color Consortium (AFPCC), which was formed in October, 2004 and was focused on developing the AFP Color Management Architecture (ACMA), was transitioned to the AFP Consortium (AFPC) in September, 2006.

The Advanced Function Presentation Consortium (AFPC) has become an incorporated nonprofit organization in February 2009. It also celebrates its fifth year of operation focused on promoting industry innovation, interoperability between its 30-plus members and collaboration on mission-critical standards.

AFP is a presentation architecture that offers independence from specific applications and devices for document and information presentation. This technology is particularly important in driving new industry initiatives like TransPromo and in the creation of mission-critical documents such as bills, statements, and policies. AFP has powerful advantages over other print architectures as it supports very high print speeds, output integrity, and centralized, automated server-based management.

"Since we came together five years ago the AFP Consortium has been a ground-breaking group that has exemplified open collaboration among industry partners and competitors for the benefit of our collective customers. Our mission from the start has been to develop an optimum presentation architecture that our customers can use as the strategic basis for current and future print solutions," said Reinhard Hohensee, InfoPrint Distinguished Engineer and past leader of the AFP Consortium. "Developing a print architecture that works across multiple vendor platforms means that each member can in turn pass on the benefits of device-independent applications, resources and workflows to their own customers."

Today the AFP Consortium has 34 members worldwide. Major suppliers of printer equipment and software vendors for AFP composition tools, transforms and viewers take part in the common effort. Regular meetings and work group sessions are constantly evolving the various sub-architectures, including:

• Mixed Object Document Content (MO:DCA) Architecture
• Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) Architecture
• AFP Line Data Architecture
• Bar Code Object Content Architecture (BCOCA)
• Color Management Object Content Architecture (CMOCA)
• Font Object Content Architecture (FOCA)
• Graphics Object Content Architecture for AFP (AFP GOCA)
• Image Object Content Architecture (IOCA)
• Presentation Text Object Content Architecture (PTOCA)

For a full list of member companies please see our website. Maybe you know some of the peoples behind them already?