Re: [hylafax-users] fax2ps conversions

[An Intrepid HylaFax User <hylafax@xxxxxxxxx>]

> An example of the fax2ps command is
> 
> fax2ps -H10.75 -W8 -S -w fax00049.tif  > fax00049.ps
> 
> The error codes I am getting from the conversion are:
> 
> Fax3Decode2D: fax00049.tif: Bad code word at scanline 1130 (x 1387).
> Fax3Decode2D: Warning, fax00049.tif: Premature EOL at scanline 1130 (got
> 1387, expected 1728).
> 
> I can also supply a sample of the file that causes this problem.

I've seen this on my setups a fair bit as well.  It seems that fax2ps is
very finickey about TIFF files, whereas most other tiff tools are not.  For
example, tiff2ps seems to work on those files where fax2ps simply hangs or
bombs out.

Are you converting those .tif's to .ps for eventual printing?  You can use
tiff2ps -2a instead of fax2ps.

If you're printing to HP Laserjets, I've written a *MUCH* better and faster
solution.  I convert the .tif's to FASST! (HP's name for it) compressed
rasters to be blasted to the printer as PCL.  It's fast as hell (pages print
at the engine limit no matter how "complex" they are), and since the raster
compression scheme is adaptive, the PCL filesizes aren't much bigger than
the original .fax files themselves!  So even if you're using parallel ports,
the transit time of the raster is very fast.

There's only one "gotcha"...  I collapse the resolution to 200x200 dpi
(linedoubling 98dpi vres faxes so they don't look squished)... technically,
this is a distortion, though I've never heard complaints.

The second gotcha is that the printable area isn't 1728 dots wide [at
200dpi], so there are about 60 pixels that need to be clipped.  In my FASST
compressor, I do some basic "content" checking to determine which lines to
clip at each framing point.  It's not fancy, but it works very well.

LJ III's and later have excellent FASST! compression algorithms, though my
tool is configurable as to which level of FASST! to use for pre-LJ-3 models.
 I worked for a company which had HP Developer tools, so the actual library
I made use of is HP's own code, though it was written in the stone age
(pre-ANSI).  At least they gave out the source.

I should clean it up a bit and post it to the HylaFAX crowd... I've been
using it for years, and never again have to endure the 2+ minutes/page waits
of using tiff2ps -2a | lpr -h

fax2ps is not reliable enough though it's not as slow as tiff2ps -- it
always barfs on slightly damaged faxes.

By the way, most printer's "dead areas" are .166in on each side, so use a
height of 10.66 and a width of 8.16 [for US Letter].

For A4, the resulting page dimensions should be: 201mm x 288mm

Cheers!

=R=


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