flexfax: A different approach for windows interfacing

[Richard Kail <e8903122@student.tuwien.ac.at>]

Hello !

Some days ago I developed a different way of interfacing hylafax with
Windows NT in a userfriedly way. Before I did this I tested whfc, but
there were some problems, so I decided to build my own way. 

This might be a solution for you if you use for example netscape on your
NT Boxes and if you have some intranet WWW Server applications (e.g.
inhouse cgi scripts) 

Ok, how to install this (I have the scripts not here, so I hope I get
everything right): 

A) First get redmon from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/rjl.html. 

>From the README of readmon:

	 Using RedMon you create redirected printer ports.  If you connect a
	 Windows printer driver to the redirected printer port, all data sent
	 to the redirected port will be forwarded by RedMon to the
	 standard input of a program.  This program is then responsible
	 for processing the data and writing it to a different printer port.

Install this on your NT Box.

B) I assume that your Windows NT Installation is on Drive C: Create a
directory c:\fax. Write a ftp response file like this: (I assume that you
call this file c:\fax\fax.ftp) 

----[knabber]------------------------------------
open server
user faxuser faxpass
bin
hash
put c:\fax\faxfile.ps  MYCOMPUTER_faxfile.ps 
quit
----[knabber]------------------------------------

Then write a batch file (c:\fax\fax.bat):

----[knabber]------------------------------------
ftp -i -v -n -s:c:\fax\fax.ftp
start /b c:\our\path\to\netscape.exe http://server/fax.cgi?faxfile=MYCOMPUTER_faxfile.ps
----[knabber]------------------------------------

C) There is a program in the redmon installation called redrun. This
program doesn't work for me, so I created my own, simple program. 
Unfortunately I don't have the source code for this by hand. The program
takes his standard input and stores it in a file named on the command line
as first argument. After doing this it startes a batch file, also named on
the command line (as second argument). Ok, however, the program is named
faxredir.exe and I assume, that you copy this into c:\fax. Then you type
in the redmon configuration dialog box as command "c:\fax\faxredir.exe" 
and for the arguments "c:\fax\faxfile.ps c:\fax\fax.bat".


Ok, the dirty NT Work is finished. If you print something to the Redmon
Printing Device (with an suitable printer driver), redmon will start
faxredir which writes the printer output to a file and starts the batch
file. The batch file transfers the file via the ftp command to your Unix
or Linux box and after that, netscape with a particular URL will be
started. (If there is a netscape already running, the netscape command
will just open a additional window on NT (which is a little bit different
to unix, where you get the ugly message about netscape lockfiles)) 


With the netscape window and the url you can easily use a small cgi
application to get the fax number from the user and to start sendfax with
the right parameters. You might also install some cgi programs for
manipulating the queue and so on. This is up and running with Windows NT
4.0 Workstation and Netscape 4.xx since some weeks for aprox. 30 Users. 


You might think that netscape is a overkill for building a fax client. For
the general case this might be true. In my case we have a running
adressbook application and some other related tasks as a cgi application,
so that the integration on fax services with the web browser was a very
nice solution. 

If someone is interrested, I will give you the source and a binary for
faxredir.exe and a NT Batch file simplifies the installation of the batch
file and the ftp script. 

Kind regards,
	Richard

------
Richard Kail        e8903122@student.tuwien.ac.at