Re: flexfax: Viewing received faxes via http browser

[David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>]

> I've written a set of perl CGI scripts to do this.  The faxrecv script
> uses the ImageMagick convert utility to convert the fax to JPEG,

Ouch.  JPEG is the WRONG format for faxes.  Of the more or less universally
supported browser formats, only XBM and GIF are appropriate for material
with fine monochrome detail.  JPEG is optimised for continous tone images,
where there are few high spatial frequency components.  It produces all
sorts of artefacts on images which are mainly black and white lines.

XBM is, of course, too inefficient for fax sized images.

> generating multiple images for a multiple-page fax.  The CGI talks
> to the fax server using FTP.pm and displays the faxes within the
> browser (no plugin or external viewer needed).

I would have thought that the PBM tools would have ported to Windows
easily, but generally it would be easier to do everything Unix side.