Re: [hylafax-users] for those who wish to fax MS Word docs...

[Tom Hayden <thayden@xxxxxxxxx>]

This has been an interesting thread. I'm actually in the process of
setting up a web->fax interface that would convert .doc files to .pdf
and .ps for fax via hylafax. The soffice solution works well, the
documents rendered are pretty accurate in terms of formatting.
Openoffice does a pretty good job at converting them.  The only
problem is that the -pt flag is SLOW. It takes at least 30 seconds per
file to print them to .pdf.   That's really not feasible if you're
going to have any kind of volume.

Also, rather than using openoffice with the -pt flags, you can write a
macro to convert to .pdf. There are a few out there, but I haven't had
any luck getting them to compile.

Cheers,

--
Tom Hayden

On 5/22/05, Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Paul, Paul, and Frank,
> 
> Thank you for your comments on this thread.
> 
> Remember that typerules is used with the sendfax client.  And, although
> sendfax can be used in a print-to-fax environment, these customers are not
> using it that way.  If they were using a print-to-fax environment then
> there would not be much problem to begin with, as in those environments
> the print driver can be modified to preformat the image to, say,
> PostScript (vector-drawn images are really a better format than
> pixel-drawn images to use when the server will be formatting the image
> itself before transmission).
> 
> So as for HylaFSP, it's not really an option because the users are not in
> a print-to-fax environment.  Furthermore, the users are not always on a
> Windows 2000/XP desktop.  The fax service is reached through an
> HTTP-driven web service - so one minute the user interface may be a
> Windows XP system (say, at work), then the next it will be their
> web-enabled Zaurus PDA (say, on the road), then the next it will be a Mac
> OS X laptop (say, at home).  Aside from having them install something on
> each platform (which would be difficult at best and would require a fair
> amount of user tech-support for the installation and maintenance of those
> installations).
> 
> As for OpenOffice, installing X and whatever else may be required to
> script-in soffice seems a bit burdensome.  Furthermore, I'm not
> confident that a straight-forward approach can be followed to use soffice
> the way that typerules requires (specifying the output file as %o).  I'm
> not against programming, but as I'm not thrilled by the idea of faxing
> Word docs in the first place (see below) if I were to conceivably do some
> programming it probably would be with improving antiword in whatever it
> may lack.
> 
> Although I'm not against suggesting to my clients that they purchase a
> license to some proprietary software (if there is any that would work on
> Linux) I believe that they will prefer to pay me to hack on antiword
> instead, even if I charge more (because long-term they feel they're
> better off).  In any case, antiword seems "good enough" for now.
> 
> Deep down, though, I'm not a big fan of handling Word docs directly, just
> like I'm not a big fan of handling HTML docs directly.  Word docs look
> slightly different based on whatever printer and print driver you happen
> to be using.  It's going to be almost impossible to guarantee proper
> pagination and formatting "identical" to what the creator's Word program
> displays on-screen because Word docs weren't really designed to be
> portable that way, like PDFs are.  And, this goes pretty much for any
> word processor filetype.  If the sender wants to guarantee that the
> formatting look as it does to them, then they must export the document to
> a format that can guarantee it.  PostScript, PDF, and TIFF all guarantee
> this.  Word and HTML cannot.  So, my using antiword here is just a couple
> steps better than using wvPS here, which is just a bit better (I suppose
> to these folks) than saying, "Well, it's better than nothing."
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Lee.
> 
> 
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> 


-- 
Tom

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