flexfax: Voice announcement for outgoing faxes (was: How can this be?)

[Dmitry Bely <dbely@mail.ru>]

George Zeigler <genz1968@mtu-net.ru> writes:

> 	I shot out 38 faxes, here is part of my faxstat -d
> Why don't jobs 298, 307 show 12:12 .  I mean, aren't they supposed to keep
> trying up to 12 times.  289 for instance only tried 10 times, while 285 tried
> 12 times.
> 
> Thanks
> George
> 
> 304  127 D russia 975-5378      3:3   1:12
> 285  116 D russia 200-3090      0:3  12:12         No carrier detected; too
> 305  127 D russia 290-7715      3:3   1:12
> 289  117 D russia 251-7709      0:3  10:12         No carrier detected
> 296  120 D russia 916-3256      0:3   7:12         No carrier detected
> 298  127 D russia 951-5506      0:0   0:12         Blocked by concurrent job
> 307  127 D russia 930-5798      0:0   0:12
> 306  127 D russia 217-6496      3:3   1:12  

There is an explicit "no carrier" counter. If it reaches the value
specified by NoCarrierRetrys parameter (1 by default), Hylafax will
immediately give up. (BTW, very usual case here in Russia, where the
most fax machines are in the "manual" mode. Typical such machine
operator does not recognize fax calling tones and fails to press
START button when an incoming fax call arrives. Instead he/she will
say "hello" over and over again, believe me :-))

Probably the problem can be partially solved using the following
scenario:

1. Instead of dialing destination number itself, Hylafax invokes an
external script with the number as a parameter. 
2. This script dials the destination number in the voice mode,
3. Plays an announcing message to the line (say, "fax, please" )
4. Returns control to Hylafax, not hanging the line up.
5. Hylafax switches modem to the fax mode, issues necessary
initialization commands and starts fax transmission with ATX0D.

What do you think guys, is it possible to implement such a thing with
minimal changes to the Hylafax core?

Hope to hear from you soon,
Dmitry