Re: [hylafax-users] Scanning and Faxing Tips

[Lee Howard <faxguy@howardsilvan.com>]

On 2003.08.27 17:19 George Bell wrote:
> I would greatly appreciate any tips for scanning documents for faxing,
> or to
> lead me to where I might find information on this topic.  So far I've
> met
> with mixed results.  I tried faxing somebody a clipped newspaper
> article as
> follows:
> 
> scanimage -v --format tiff --mode Lineart | sendfax -v -m -D -d
> 123-4567
> 
> the receiver said the fax was illegible.  Then I tried:
> 
> scanimage -v --format tiff --mode Grayscale --resolution 300 | sendfax
> -v -m
> -D -d 123-4567
> 
> the resultant fax was somewhat better and readable, though still of
> fairly
> poor quality.

The available options are going to vary depending upon the backend SANE 
driver that you're using.  I personally use:

scanimage --mode Binary --resolution 200 --format tiff -x 215 -y 297 | 
sendfax -n -m -d 1234567

However, if I really want to send an extremely high resolution fax I do:

scanimage --mode Binary --resolution 400 --format tiff -x 215 -y 297 | 
sendfax -n -G -d 1234567

The "-G" option, which enables extended resolutions up to 400 dpi, is 
only available in CVS currently and requires that we have faxed to the 
destination before (to gather extended resolution capability in the 
info file).

> Would it help to scan the fax as tiff or pnm, and then convert to a
> postscript document, before using sendfax?

Since a scanner is not drawing lines, but rather is doing a bitmap of 
dots, there's no benefit in using PostScript unless you find a 
conversion problem with tiff2fax.  PNM won't do anything for you.  TIFF 
is as good as it gets with scanning.

Lee.

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