Re: flexfax: How to set HylaFax to act as a network printer?

[Nico Garcia <raoul@cirl.meei.harvard.edu>]

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On Sun, 31 May 1998, Constantin Teodorescu wrote:

> I was imagine the following mechanism:
> 
> All the workstations (Linux and W95) are configured to print to a
> network printer with postscript capabilities.
> On the server, the documents that must be sent ar coming in a Postscript
> format, Ok ?
> 
> That means that a particular text, let's say :
> 
> <HYLAFAX-PHONE-NUMBER=xxxxxxxxx>    (the same font, size and
> characteristics)
> 
> would be found in the postscript file as clear text. Some simple filters
> based on sed or a perl script could extract the phone number from the
> file. After that, the file is processed by HylaFax who is rendering him
> and send it.

Sounds reasonable: but you still need some system to *PUT* the
information into the script in the first place, right? Why not just
take the output of that and feed it to the HylaFAX client mechanisms,
via WHFC for Win95 or via the sendfax tool in UNIX?

> With the above described mechanism, the W95 workstations would print in
> the same way. We declare a Postscript printer shared on the server and
> send files to it.
> 
> Am I missing something simple that would make this not possible ?

Except that WHFC does precisely what you've described, no.

> > The UNIX boxes are a bit different: there are so many ways to send print
> > jobs to the print spool, each slightly different, that you've have to
> > think hard about how to determine the fax numer, comments, etc. for each
> > outgoing fax job.
> 
> Yes. I think that this could be the problem. But could it be solved as I
> say ?

I think so, but I think you shouldn't bother to put *in* the data
as postscript, then take it back *OUT* via a print spool.

Of course, if you manage to do it well, it might be a very good tool.
It just sounds like considerable work.

Why not have the UNIX users use a text-based tool like sfax or a GUI
like tkhylafax to manipulate saved postscript files from their
program's output formats? Not as graceful, but all the tools are in
place already.


			Nico Garcia
			Senior Engineer, CIRL 
			Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary
			raoul@cirl.meei.harvard.edu

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