I guess I am on the right track...

I received an email for a product called AFP Tuner from MakeAFP PTE LTD.

I don't know where they are from - somewhere in Asia I believe - but their product includes one of the elements I am working on: "Replaces legacy AFP page segments with JPEG/TIFF/GIF color images."

I suppose this is good news in a couple of ways.

First off it validates the idea of basic AFP tuning (there are corresponding PDF tuning products as well).  Somewhere, half way around the world, someone has the same idea.  The bulk of this product focuses on other aspects of AFP like font substitution and there doesn't seem to be a parallelization aspect - but I am pleased over all to see other like-minded companies out there.

Secondly, they don't seem real interested in what you can do with color.  "Legacy AFP page segments" means ugly 1-bit images so fixing them is not hard or interesting.  Making them look good, on the other hand, is a different matter.

One interesting idea they present is this: "Replaces legacy shading patterns or shading images with vector color or gray background graphics..."  Basically this involves identifying "gray boxes" of various sorts that have been constructed with images and replacing them with graphic commands to draw and fill a box.  Others have asked me about this feature and I am very close to being able to provide it.

This offering is also a "command line" style application based on the information they provide.

I think that in the long run there will need to be a UI plus an underlying command line application to make this type of tool easier to deal with for end-users.

AFP vs PPML

I have been experimenting with AFP external resources (see previous posts).

It seems clear that this is a very powerful model for handling what PPML calls "reusable objects" - basically anything you want to reuse is placed in a resource package at the front of the job.  Each resource is given a unique name.  Inside the job when you wish to access the resource on a given page you map it into the page's environment and then place the object.

AFP only offers rotation, simple positioning, some limited scaling, clipping and other functions as opposed to PPMLs full CTM model.  But its an effective model and fairly easy to use.

So at least from a "functional equivalence" perspective I can address some print capabilities requiring this type of function.