AFP to PostScript transform filter

In the printer definitions for PostScript printers, you can specify the AFP to PostScript transform filter and associate it with the line-data, MO:DCA-P, and XML data formats. (A filter is a program that modifies the input data before it is sent to the printer or email destination.) When you associate the transform filter with these data formats, Infoprint Server automatically calls the AFP to PostScript transform when it processes documents with these data formats.

Table 19 shows the filter name and filter options that you can specify in the Filter field of a printer definition.

The filter options mean:

%filter-options

Causes options that are specified in the filter-options job attribute to be passed to the transform.

You can type the %filter-options option in any position relative to the other filter options. If you specify filter options to the right of %filter-options, those options override the same options specified in the filter-options job attribute.

-c transformclass

Specifies the name of a transform class that is defined in the transform configuration file, aopxfd.conf. The name is case-sensitive. The job submitter can also specify this option in the filter-options job attribute.

-i inputcodepage

This option applies only to the Line data data format. If you specify this option for any other data formats, it is ignored.

This option identifies the code page to which line data is converted before it is transformed. Specify a code page that corresponds to the coded fonts that the transform uses to transform the line data. (Coded fonts can be specified in the page definition, in the chars job attribute or CHARS JCL parameter, and in the Character sets field of the printer definition.)

To transform line data that is already encoded in the code page that corresponds to the coded fonts, do not specify this option. When this option is not specified, line data is not converted from one code page to another before it is transformed. For example, to transform line-data documents that specify coded fonts (for example, in the CHARS JCL parameter) and currently print correctly on an AFP printer, do not specify this option.

You must specify this option to correctly transform documents that are encoded in code pages that do not correspond to the code page for the coded fonts. This is most likely to occur when the Print Interface LPD receives print requests with a print command of r in the LPD control file. Print command r indicates that the file contains ANSI carriage control characters (FORTRAN carriage control) and is, therefore, line data.

To determine the code page to specify, first determine the AFP code page for each character set. For AFP code pages, see , . Then determine the name of the corresponding code page that IBM® provides and that the iconv utility supports. For valid code page names, see z/OS XL C/C++ Programming Guide.

The AFP code page and the name of the code pages that iconv uses are different. For example, if the coded fonts in Table 5 are specified (for example, in the CHARS JCL parameter), specify the IBM-500 code page in the -i option: -i IBM-500.

When you specify this option, also make sure that the code page specified in the Document code page field of the printer definition identifies the code page in which input documents are encoded. (See the ISPF help for information about the Document code page field.) A job submitter can also specify a document code page for a specific print job in the document-codepage job attribute.

Tip:

When you specify this option, you might need to create a separate printer definition for use only by those applications that require the -i option and code page conversion.

-F tracefile -T traceoptions

These options trace the transforms. Your IBM service representative might ask you to specify these options to help IBM diagnose problems. These options can also be specified in the filter-options job attribute. For an explanation of these options, see Finding the transform stderr file.