Re: [hylafax-users] Question about Hylafax and Multiple Users

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Uwe Dippel wrote:

> I can only wonder why this barrage against introducing OCR and PUBLISH 
> crept up.
> Maybe it is against a status quo agreed with the commercial 
> applications ?
> To me it was kind of surprising how my suggestions were shot down. 
> Nobody seemed to express the slightest interest in either. On the 
> contrary: "No way !"


When I first started using HylaFAX it would send an e-mail notification 
upon fax receipt... and only if FaxDispatch was configured to do so, and 
that's it; there was no image attached or multi-language support.  At 
that time people wanting anything more would write their own custom 
faxrcvd script, and people were sharing those scripts on this list.

By far the most sought-after faxrcvd behavior was attaching a copy of 
the TIFF image to the e-mail.  So, Nico Kadel-Garcia shared his custom 
faxrcvd script that did that very thing.  Due to demand I eventually put 
those on the HylaFAX HOWTO and made them support different filetypes, 
like PDF.  Then later I saw them integrated into the source code 
repository - because it was such a sought-after feature that it would 
serve most everyone best by having them there, ready-to-use with the 
flick of a FILETYPE and SENDTO switch.

The upside to that work is that HylaFAX administrators who cannot write 
shell code now can easily get the most sought-after feature very quickly 
in a config-setting type of way.  The downside to that work is that 
HylaFAX administrators who can write shell script just don't (possibly 
because they just don't know that faxrcvd can be replaced so easily) - 
we now see very few people writing their own faxrcvd scripts.  In some 
ways that's a good thing, but it's also a sad thing, too.

To my eyes HylaFAX was designed in a way that made it very configurable 
and customizable.  Part of that design is having a simple default 
faxrcvd script that suits many less-experienced HylaFAX implementations 
but one that can obviously be replaced with a FaxRcvdCmd modem 
configuration option for those who want more exotic or different behaviors.

A few years back we discussed having a PRINTTO feature or something like 
that in faxrcvd.  Unfortunately, printing methods are not universal 
among all the systems that HylaFAX supports, and so we ended up needing 
to consider other PRINTTYPE features and then we ran into issues about 
non-postscript printers... it was a very complicated scenario.  I hope 
that you can imagine it.  So ultimately the whole idea was abandoned... 
not because it was a bad idea, but because there wasn't a clean, 
universal way to implement it and, at the same time, maintain relative 
simplicity in faxrcvd and a simple config-like approach to FaxDispatch.

There's no doubt that the work you've shown is useful.  Undoubtedly 
others will find it so as well.  However, their inclusion into the 
source code repository is similar to that of PRINTTO ... there's not a 
simple, universal approach to it and it makes HylaFAX's default faxrcvd 
appear more entrenched.

I tend to believe that the appropriate place for these kinds of things 
is on a place like a "custom faxrcvd contribution repository" ... a 
place where users can go and hang their faxrcvd scripts for others to 
share and use.  Maybe this is a thing more suitable to a wiki of types.

Recent work in putting reuseable code into a "bin/common-functions" 
script and Aidan's even more recent work (in CVS, I believe) in 
continuing that approach is the right thing to do, in my opinion.  It 
slims down the default faxrcvd file, making it less formidible to 
replace, and puts valuable code in a place where administrators can 
easily reuse it for their own custom faxrcvd scripts.  This is what I 
want to see continue: making the default faxrcvd more universally 
applicable while making the customizable design also more obvious.

Thanks,

Lee.


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