The FF reader simply opens the input file and immediately starts reading features and returning them to the rest of the FME for processing. If directed to do so, the FF reader will produce a partner autoka.par parameter file that contains the relevant metatext found in the FF file. The reader doesn’t have any requirement for definition statements, as there are no user-defined attributes in the FF specification.
If the data being read contains self-intersecting polygons, the “Fix self-intersecting polygons” parameter in the Input Settings dialog can be checked (set to “yes”) to break self-intersecting polygons into non-intersecting polygons.
Each feature returned has its feature type set to the geometric type of the feature, as follows: point, line, text, polygon, cluster, or group.
The first three feature types are simple details and are processed completely by the reader itself. The last three feature types are passed to the rest of the FME with attributes (up-links and down-links) indicating how the compound features may be re-assembled from several other features, but this is not done directly by the reader.
Final processing and construction of the compound features may be done in the mapping file if the user desires. By default, all auto-generated mapping files and drag-and-drop translations with the FME provide the mapping file functions necessary to collect the pieces and construct the compound features completely, flagging any file errors it may encounter.