Re: flexfax: MIME/PostScript/PDF tools

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

> are referring to?  Where can they be found?  If you are sending
> native PostScript files to HylaFax (which I am) is there a tool
> that will directly convert PostScript to Mime?  Or, if you want

You hardly need a tool, just add these lines to the mail header:

  MIME-Version: 1.0
  Content-Type: application/postscript

and make the postscript file the body.

> the attachment to be read by the widest number of mail programs
> is it a good idea to use GhostScript (or are there any other tools?)
> to convert it to PDF before subsequently converting it to MIME
> format for transmission.

For PDF, which is binary format (although plain text PDF is possible,
it is sensitive to newline conversions), use metasend (from metamail)
or mmencode.

Be careful how you go to PDF.  fax2ps is almost certainly going to
produce bloated files and you need at least gs5.50, with some
distiller parameters added, to create compressed images.

Note, the most efficient format for Windows 9x and NT is tiff G4 fax,
viewable by Wang/Kodak/Eastman Imaging.

The most universally viewable format by non-techies is two colour
GIF.  (My company assumes that everyone has IE or NS browser and 
more or less everyone has MS Word, but hardly anyone in our market
sector has even heard of PDF.)