Re: [hylafax-users] How have others dealt with overlays?

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Ruggiero wrote:
> The old system (a standalone Reagan-era PC running "Faxlink Gold") was able to do two things (and only two things :): take an HP PCL5 formatted document (the dynamic output from an application program), place it on top of a PCX-form overlay (static, and stored on the fax server itself), and then fax the combination out together. Almost always it's just a single page at a time we're dealing with, not multiple pages.
>
> I really want to maintain something like this, if only because there are literally dozens of legacy apps that depend on this exact format and I don't want to have to rewrite them all.
>
> So what have others done, when faced with the need to send a combination of a static overlay (in some format; doesn't need to be PCX - I can convert the existing ones) with dynamic printer output (PCL5 would certainly be easiest since that's what they're already outputting)??
>
> I'm not above doing some shell script magic, but I'm kind of clueless on how to start, what Unix tools I should be looking at, and how to tie it all in to Hylafax. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

You'll probably want to prepare the image before submitting it to 
HylaFAX.  So HylaFAX is really outside of the equation until the image 
is prepared.

So you'll need to script together a mechanism of doing what you need.  
For PCL I would suggest that you look at GhostPDL/GhostPCL.

If you take a look at...

http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/howto/tweaking.php#ss6.12

... you'll see a script that employs a rudimentary approach to 
overlaying one image over another using Ghostscript and libtiff tools.  
Obviously you won't be able to use the script straight-up, but it may 
give you some clues as to what you could attempt to do first.

Thanks,

Lee.


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