Re: flexfax: HylaFAX with Macs, CGI or MacFlex?

[Sascha Knific <knific@attglobal.net>]

Hi,

Aristedes Maniatis wrote:

> Great! I am glad there is interest.

There is more than you think ;-))).


> I had an (email) conversation with the developer of MacFlex. He indicated
> that he will work on the product but when his time allows. He was unsure
> whether he might release it as open source one day or perhaps as shareware.

I had a similar conversation with him one year ago. Unfortualy nothing happened

until now. I lost hope. ;-(((


> None of the other Mac clients seems to be sufficiently mature.
>
> However, I have done some more work on the PPD driver. I created a driver
> which accepts text fields but have run into several problems:
>
> 1- I don't know enough about fax transmission. For instance, what is the
> optimum screen ruling for halftones (or does the fax standard support
> greyscales?). I know the resolution is approximately 200x100dpi in low res
> and 200x200 in hi, but how do I tell Hylfax which to use once Ghostscript
> has rendered the image?

As I can remember there is a b/w and 16 grays mode. The low resolution is
96 x 96 dpi and the hi resolution is 196 x 96 dpi.


> 2- I am having difficulties with the PPD interface. The Apple Tech Note 1068
> which details the DITL and ppdT resources comes with a sample file which
> doesn't work! I don't know if this is because the TN was written for
> Laserwriter 8.5.1 and I am using 8.7, but the interface elements are all
> screwed up.

I tried to make a PPD like this but I didnīt come very far. I took one
of the
more complicated Apple PPDs to find out about it.


> 3- Can I just drop some tags into the postscript for the destination phone
> number, etc.? Or is there some other mechanism that Hylafax uses?

One the server side the ps file needs to be parsed for this tags and then
passed
on to hylafax via sendfax. This would be the only applicable solution. So
you will need a filter on the server side.


> If someone is knowledgable in any of these areas and would like to lend a
> hand creating this PPD I would be most grateful. This PPD would be a neat
> solution and might even work on under Windows. Hopefully many people could
> benefit from it.

The hadling of PPD extensions under Windows is diffrent to them on the
mac. So
I donīt think that it would be practicable to use.


The best solution would be to have a printer driver with uses the LaserWriter
driver
for ps generation but has an own user interface. I donīt know if this is
possible and
Iīm not a programmer und very much less a mac programmer.


A couple of days ago I had a great idea (I thing):
We could make a solid PPD for use with ghostscript (which then also
could be
used
in other place like web to fax...). Then create a printer which prints
via lpr
to the
localhost (this shouldbe possible with newer LaserWriter drivers).

The "only" thing we need then is a hylafax client which accepts the ps
file via
lpd,
asks for futher job infos and passes them on to hylafax (port 4559).


Iīm willing to fiddle around with a client (but only in Java) and try to become
a
programmer ;-))).


Sascha Knific