Re: flexfax: Design for a portable Java hylafax clients: i wantyour opinions, please!

[Peter Stamfest <peter.stamfest@eunet.at>]

On Tue, 9 May 2000, Edward King wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> You mentioned an efficient converter for fax - pdf.  I just finished modifying
> the faxrcvd script to convert the fax into a pdf file and then email it -- it
> uses Peter Stamfest's fax2pdf program and somebody else's base64.
> 
> The email has the fax as an attachment -- and has been tested with Outlook 2000
> and Netscape 4.7 (both recognize it as a PDF with no problem).  We also checked
> it using Acrobat 3 and 4 -- both work.
> 
> If you want a copy of the modified faxrcvd script I can post that.


To add to this: I have built an integrated Email/Web based system that
additionally implements access control to faxes by using the MD5 hash of
the TIFF files as per-fax keys.

The entire system is written in PHP with some perl programs in its orbit.
It uses a database (Must be SQL, with a binding to both Perl and PHP,
ODBC should do) to keep fax related information. It can be viewed as a
postprocessor to the hylafax fax receiving operations.

The system also generates emails that may or may not contain the Fax as an
attachment. Additionally, an URL can be included into this email to
indicate where the fax can be viewed on the web.

It has some more interesting features, like web based configuration,
password protection, etc.

The whole system currently exists as RH 6.1 RPM and it is in its beta test
phase. 

The thing, however, is not free - I sell this to my customers [Hey, I have
to earn _some_ money, this is my only job].

My fax2pdf is just a spin-off of the whole thing. And fax2pdf is GPLed and
will remain it.

peter



> 
> -  Edward King
> 
> Iain Stevenson wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm not sure whether this will work for a Mac - but it would be nice if it
> > did.  It certainly appears to be possible to generate a PostScript file
> > easily enough from a customised print driver.  Viewing multi-page TIFFs is a
> > bit of a pain (graphic converter fails on 50% of files, MacFlex works but is
> > specific to fax etc).  There is a need for efficient output to pdf format (I
> > tried using the available tools to convert the TIFF files but the quality
> > was awful).
> >
> > The big problem for me with Hylafax - as a dabbler in programming - is the
> > lack of a documented and easy to use interface to the Hylafax job scheduler.
> > With a piece of intelligent middleware (Java or otherwise) that could submit
> > jobs in a platform independent way I'm sure the variety of client
> > implementations would increase significantly.
> >
> >   Iain
> >
> > on 4/5/00 6:44 pm, Bernd Proissl at news@proissl.de wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > 1. is java 2 widely availabe on your (client) platforms?
> > > or is it supposed to become availbe in the near future?
> > >
> > No - development tools for Java 2 are proprietary and costly (last time I
> > looked)
> >
> > > 2. What is your prefered procedure for sending a fax?
> > >
> > Printer driver or Email
>