[hylafax-users] Hylafax FSP DLL for Windows 2000/XP

[Dmitry Bely <dbely@mail.ru>]

Hello everyone,

I need your advice.

I decided to create my own Hylafax client for Windows 2000/XP, because none
of existing one fit my needs; the main problems were:

- Unacceptable fax image quality due to using Postscript printer driver and
Ghostscript rasterizer (the latest Cypheus has TIFF printer driver, but I
did not tested it).
- Deep fax knowledge is required to configure and use them, that average
corporate user does not have.
- They require a lot of additional libraries, non-standard phonebooks etc.,
being themselves multimegabyte monsters.
- They cannot be easily distributed in the corporate network. 
- They are not reliable enough (those versions that I've tested)
- They provide no cover page support.
- They do not show the fax call in progress and generate heavy Hylafax
server load due to the constant polling.
- The best existing Windows fax client (Cypheus) is expensive enough: $30
pear seat in the medium or large corporate network is probably not the very
low price.

So I ported Hylafax client classes to Win32 (and also sendfax utility),
took my own TIFF library that I wrote 5 years ago for another project,
added the necessary code and created Hylafax virtual fax service provider
DLL for Windows NT fax service (see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/fax/faxusing_7stv.asp for more
information). Now I have 

- All capabilities of the native Windows NT fax service: TIFF printer,
providing the excellent image quality even in draft (204x98dpi) mode,
cover pages, LDAP address books etc.
- Ease of use: no special fax knowledge is required.
- No polling of Hylafax server - thanks to Hylafax triggers the fax job is
shown in progress using the Windows fax monitor.
- The client is extremely lightweight: only 200Kb DLL and some registry
settings.
- Easy network distribution via Windows 2000/XP Group Policy (everything is
packaged into .MSI file)

Currently only sending is implemented, because my network users do not need
fax receiving at their desktops.

Yes, Windows 95/98/Me/NT is not supported, but I does not have such
workstations here.

Now I am thinking what to do with this work. Is there any interest to such
software? Probably I will not release it under open source license (for
my TIFF library and some other issues). But closed sources mean a lot of
user support, for which I simply does not have enough time. Should this
software cost some money?

So I would like to know your opinion.

- Dmitry Bely



____________________ HylaFAX(tm) Users Mailing List _______________________
  To subscribe/unsubscribe, click http://lists.hylafax.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi
 On UNIX: mail -s unsubscribe hylafax-users-request@hylafax.org < /dev/null
  *To learn about commercial HylaFAX(tm) support, mail sales@hylafax.org.*