Re: flexfax: Converting to jpg

[David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>]

> i have the problem to need the incoming faxes converted to jpg or any
> other format, which allows direct view of the faxes vie "normal"
> webbrowser.

"normal" browsers generally run on Windows 98 or NT.  Wang/Kodak/
Eastman Imaging is supplied bundled with these or as a free add on, 
so all you need it the right file associations.  W/K/E Imaging can 
handle multipage faxes, and can scale the images and rotate them,
things that "normal" browsers can't do.

JPG is an inappropriate image format for faxes.  Second best to fax
coding is PNG (which should be handled by recent NS and IE browsers)
with the number of colours set to two (and the palette forced to black
and white), after that is GIF, with a similar palette, although many
modern tools won't code to GIF because of US patents on LZW.

People have translated images in faxrcvd and reported doing this on the
list in the past.

"normal" browsers is assumed to mean IE4 or 5 and NS4.x with images 
enabled, and running on a Win32 platform.  This is an acceptable 
restriction for an intranet, but not where the choice of browser is
uncontrolled, e.g. on the internet.