Re: flexfax: Attachments in proprietary formats (i.e. Word)

["Wout Mertens" <Wout.Mertens@rug.ac.be>]

Hi,

> > And the other viable option is making a complete MAPI transport agent
that
> > renders each file given to postscript (or TIFF, preferrably), via the
> > shell extensions. I know the method for printing a random file to a
> > certain printer via windows (done some reading), so now all I need is
the
> > specs for a transport agent or the source for WHFC :).

> seems you like adventureous programming (for my adventure of wiring the
> portmonitor see http://www.transcom.de/whfc/writing.php )
Yes, I read it some time ago and really enjoyed it :)
Which is a reason why I don't really want to do it myself :)

> However if you have such a MAPI agent (please don't ask me how to
> write such a thing) then you can use the WHFC ole interface from there.
Nice, haven't thought about that...

> My portmonitor uses also the WHFC Ole interface for sending the
> files. The portmonitor was the primary reason for the OLE inteface
> since Windows has no good way of process communication.
Very true. All hail M$ :(

But now that I have contacted you, I would much rather just extend WHFC to
accept attachments.
The best way IMHO would be to accept a list of files and let WHFC print
those. This minimizes the user work involved. I have outlined a way to do
this in the mailing list.
An alternative, and very simple, too, is to wait with sending the job until
the user says it can be sent, and in the mean while accept all print jobs,
and send these as attachments. As I said, I would be happy to help you code
it, I just need to have the feature :)
In fact, I think that both methods could be equally useful (e.g. when you
want to fax part of a picture vs. you want to fax ten documents), so maybe
it is best to have both methods?

Wout.