If you're in the over 50 crowd (which is where I reside) and that's all you have to work with the answer may be yes, but not if you're looking to modernize.
Let's get together in a room with a bunch of younger types and do a comparison of technologies:
-You show users how to create AFP and then write an individual RPG program for each form document.
-I will show them how to visually design a form in minutes and then test interactively using an existing spool file or database with no RPG programming. And to boot how to quickly re-purpose an existing AFP form within an hour.
To be fair I was the original architect of iForms so I'm a bit biased, but the above form modernization challenge stands.
Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com
But AFP *IS* an excellent "little more than bare iron" solution for generating PDFs from RPG.
--
JHHL
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Schoen
Sent: Thursday, December 8, 2016 9:53 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Help Systems' email about AFP support discontinued at 7.3 - not true ! - or is it ?
Vern is technically correct that the AFP data steam is not slated for removal from IBM i that I know of .
However let's be honest who wants to continue using and investing resources in AFP long term unless you like manual overlay creation.
AFP is an outdated and painful technology to work with and IBM sold off its printing division which subsequently is removing support for AFP utilities and Infoprint Designer and is recommending 3rd party alternatives, thus the intent of the marketing email.
There are no fewer than 5-6 manual process steps to create an overlay and that method appears to be still available if you like pain.
If not then you should consider tools like our iForms software to modernize your form generation processes and do push button preview during design.
Hope that calm's Verns excitement since I know he uses AFP heavily :-)
And if you're looking to modernize your form processes take the opportunity to schedule an iForms demo and move towards the future.
http://www.helpsystems.com
Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com
------------------------------
message: 7
date: Thu, 8 Dec 2016 09:08:02 -0600
from: Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Help Systems' email about AFP support discontinued at 7.3 -
not true!
Just got an email from Help Systems saying that AFP is not supported on IBM i 7.3 - this is not the case!
What is no longer supported is the 5770-AF1 product, Advanced Function Printing __Utilities__ - my emphasis on __Utilities__ a la Chuck Pence'
newsgroup formatting! :)
There is no indication that the AFP data stream and protocol are no longer supported - just this and one other tool for designing pages.
(InfoPrint Designer is also no longer supported - I thought that had gone away some time ago.)
So an unfortunate over-enthusiastic misunderstanding, eh, what?
Regards
Vern
midrange.com
