by Reinhard Hohensee

Whenever a new year comes around, there are usually more than enough cries of “new year, new me” to go around. No matter how that approach makes you feel, each new year is a new opportunity to build on what came before it, and AFP has a great history on which to build.

In 2017, I’m hoping to see AFP both build on its recent accomplishments and get more acceptance of them. For instance, AFP/GA (AFP Graphic Arts) marries AFP’s reliability and data integrity with the graphic arts presentation quality that people have historically associated with PDF. AFP/GA functionally supports multi-page PDF printing, and printing PDF-quality images with all of the benefits that AFP brings. It’s amazing stuff, and I’d like to see more users adopt it.

But I’m not just asking our users to change. In 2017, I’m hoping we in the Consortium can improve the metadata support in AFP Intelligent viewer software is in high demand and is becoming more prevalent, and metadata can tag additional important information to the often mission-critical data in a print file, as well as help visually impaired readers more easily access information.

Another thing that 2017 marks is AFP’s 33rd year. How many IT standards can claim to still be vibrant, widely used, changing and growing after 33 years? While it’s not exactly “new year, new AFP”, I’m excited to see where the new year takes us.