flexfax: Hylafax rpm issues

[Ramana Juvvadi <juvvadi@lekha.org>]

I hope with this rpm release, hylafax is easier than before to setup.

The old annoyances of afm directories, entries in /etc/aliases, 
/etc/inetd.conf, /etc/inittab, /etc/services, creating of the user
fax are all taken care of.

To send and receive faxes all one needs to do is

	(1) rpm -i hylafax-4.0-4.i386.rpm
	(2) reboot
	(3) Edit /var/spool/hyla/config and
		/var/spool/hyla/config.modem 
	    until one can send and receive faxes
	(4) Further customization can be done by editing
		/usr/lib/hyla/typerules
		/usr/lib/hyla/faxcover.ps
		/var/spool/hyla/bin/faxrcvd


Let me answer some of the issues raised:

(1) /usr vs /usr/local

	Traditionally unix systems put all the programs that were
shipped with the machine /usr/bin. The programs that were installed
by the sys admin went into /usr/local. Undoubtedly, this a very useful
convention.

	However, RPMs provide a new way of managing applications. /usr
directory is no longer monolithic. It is composed of files from
the RPM packages. The philosophy of Redhat has been to put the RPM
files in /usr. /usr/local should be used for the .tar.gz packages. 
Not all packagers follow Redhat convention. Redhat itself
follows the convention meticulously and I hope Redhat will include
the hylafax RPM in their next release.


(2) fax vs hyla

	I am sorry that I had to deviate from the convention
and changed /var/spool/fax to /var/spool/hyla and /usr/lib/fax
to /usr/lib/hyla. There are two other packages that are bundled with
Redhat Linux: efax and mgetty+sendfax. mgetty+sendfax has two 
directories, /var/spool/fax/incoming and /var/spool/fax/outgoing.
I think it will be a major source of confusion to have 
6 directories of hylafax and 2 directories of mgetty+sendfax
in the same /var/spool/fax. While removing all the other
fax packages is an option, most people don't bother to
remove them. To the extent possible, I think it is better to
not to intrude into other's namespace.

(3) xferstats and xferlog

After a suggestion by Nico Garcia I changed it to the more descriptive
xferfaxstats intstead of the confusing xferstat. Similarly I changed 
xferlog to xferfaxlog. 
	

(4) default etc/config etc/config.modem

While one can use 'faxsetup' and 'faxaddmodem' to generate these
files, I found it easier to edit these files directly. Especially
'faxaddmodem' can be a source of real frustration. It should be
remembered that config and config.modem most likely need some editing
to suit the particular modem at hand.

Ramana