Re: [hylafax-users] pdf2ps, faxmail, sendfax, sendmail

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Tom Rymes wrote:

> I have seen this about 500 times on the list and it always elicits the 
> same response from me:
> 
> 1.) I am not a programmer, so I can't just throw anything together.

I don't mean to sound elitist, but HylaFAX does require a fair amount of 
skill to get customized and working ideally.  For example, FaxDispatch 
customization requires at least *some* shell skills.  Then there's 
FaxNotify, DynamicConfig, and others.  These were all meant for 
customization.  Sure, HylaFAX works without them being touched, and that's 
the idea.  But when someone wants to take HylaFAX beyond the defaults, 
then some skill is required to make that happen.

So my point is that when a HylaFAX administrator wants to take HylaFAX 
beyond the defaults then they need to either 1) have some skills to make 
that happen, or 2) get someone to do it for them.

> 2.) Why isn't the current distribution updated to make it so that 
> faxmail *can* handle PDF?

faxmail works by blindly throwing a PostScript wrapper around all files it 
gets and then delivers those to hfaxd.  So if you submit ASCII text it 
gets a PostScript wrapper.  If you send PostScript then it gets a 
PostScript wrapper around the PostScript.  You can't take this approach, 
however, with much of anything else including TIFF and PDF.  So 
consequently faxmail would pretty much need to be rewritten entirely to 
natively handle PostScript.  That said, it has already been mentioned on 
this list that faxmail can be configured to handle PDF (see "External 
scripts..." in the faxmail man page).  I'll admit, though, that the 
documentation is difficult to follow, and I've never actually heard of 
anyone doing it.  Honestly, I'd say that it's probably as easy to rewrite 
faxmail as it is to write one of those conversion scripts.

So, anyway, extending faxmail doesn't appear to be something that 
developers are interested in doing on their own motivations.

> (especially if it is so easy, and so many 
> others have already invented this wheel, it seems.)

It's a customization in each case.  It's not something, really, that you 
expect to be useful for others.  If I gave you one of my faxmail 
replacements then you would be pretty much required to know shell 
scripting in order to get it working for you.  And so you'd ask me to do 
it for you, and it would just go to reconfirm my statements above that if 
you can't customize it yourself you'll need to get someone to do it for 
you.

Lee.


> Tom
> 
> On Apr 14, 2005, at 6:42 PM, Lee Howard wrote:
> 
> > Robert McIntosh wrote:
> >
> >> I'd like to send faxes via e-mail and receive them via e-mail.  E-mail
> >> without attachments goes to fax no problem.  The big hurdle right now
> >> is getting either sendfax or faxmail to decode outbound pdf
> >> attachments and also incoming faxes sent to a specified address.
> >>
> >
> > You say "sendfax or faxmail" but really you just mean "faxmail" 
> > because sendfax can handle PDF natively just fine.
> >
> > The best thing that you could do for yourself is to follow the faxmail 
> > instructions, as you have, but write your own version of faxmail in 
> > your favorite programming language (shell, php, perl, python, 
> > whatever).  Assuming that you have uudecode available to you doing 
> > writing a faxmail replacement will amount to under 100 lines of code, 
> > a few hours of work... and in the end you have something more 
> > versatile and more understandable than faxmail can be.
> >
> > Lee.
> >
> >
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> 
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