Re: flexfax: Hylafax future (SAMBA)

[Leslie Mikesell <les@Mcs.Net>]

> Ive watched the discussion on the windows client / printing thing .. and
> am pretty much against using samba to achieve this ...

I think you are missing the big picture here.  Basically if you have unix
machines and Windows machines on the same network you should install
samba to integrate them (assuming you want to integrate them...).  You
get a lot more than the ability to send faxes as print jobs.

> Mainly becuase if you want to install HylaFAX its pretty much .. make sure
> you have gs installed plus the fonts and go for it .. pretty straight forward.
> 
> Now while the addition of a samba server seems straight forward, its like
> adding *another* full package to the system .. ie. not a helper package.
> Adding samba and the configuration that goes along with it is like setting
> up another hylafax server ... it has its own problems, compatibility or
> otherwise and more importantly .. Hylfax would rely heavily on Samba for
> this particular functionality ... If something changes in Samba .. and breaks
> HylaFAX then there not much you can do other than change HylaFAX ...

Samba transports the postscript to the unix box.  How can that break?   The
actual submission is then done by a script that invokes the unix version
of sendfax.

> While the other road of making the dll's or wotever talk to hylafax properly
> is the more difficult solution .. I think its the way to go with this type
> of problem if it is implemented with HylaFAX...

I certainly don't have anything against this approach, I just don't see anyone
doing it, mostly because you need to know the internals of windows printing
mechanism and I'd expect anything based on that to be much more fragile with
respect to future changes than a network print server.

Note that if installing samba as a separate step seems too complicated you
can always get a Linux distribution like RedHat that will have it running
out of the box.

Les Mikesell
  les@mcs.com