Re: flexfax: Hylafax future

[Leslie Mikesell <les@Mcs.Net>]

> >The missing piece with either technique is a database-like phonebook
> >so you can easily send to selected groups.  This should have some
> >way of combining private and system-wide lists.  LDAP would work but
> >it is much more complicated than samba to install and maintain.
> >
> Yes - this makes it look more and more like a solution based on email.
> (i dont imagine you would see an available LDAP solution this millenium)

I wouldn't say that with both Netscape and Microsoft in the picture.
The free umich code is actually usable for this but it is a lot of
work to set it up and the LDAP specs still seem to be changing.
I think email would really work well for list expansion and routing
(i.e. let the email transport take it to the best of several fax
servers for final delivery) but I'm not sure how to handle security
in that context since it is pretty easy to forge email.  If you
already have an email gateway then it doesn't matter - you could
throw everything at it.   

> They use a  file format 'awd'(i think) that i've never seen anywhere else,
> apparently microsoft is working on new fax software for windows NT -
> personal fax for NT workstation(to begin with, expanding later to full
> faxserver for NT).
> Personal Fax apparently uses tiff files, they've thrown away the awd file
> format

Do you know if this will interoperate with the existing fax system or
will they (in typical Microsoft fashion) require that you replace
everything or use only NT to use it?

Les Mikesell
  les@mcs.com