[hylafax-devel] Supporting Digital Modems in HylaFAX.

[Marcio Saito <marcio@cyclades.com>]

Hello.

Thanks for the replies to my message.

Nico wrote:
> Whoof! We *like* you! And it's a very good question. Let's see:
> HylaFAX runs on UNIX: the RAS box therefore must be an honest-to-ghu
> UNIX box, with ghostscript, libtiff, and some other packages
> installed.  I suspect you don't want to go there, although if it's
> actually Linux or another UNIX at its core it may be feasible.

Maybe my explanation yesterday was not very clear. I'm *not* planning
to:

- Run HylaFAX or a fax server inside the RAS. That could be possible,
but is not trivial.

- Provide drivers so that modems inside a RAS appear as /dev/tty to
HylaFAX. I've gone that way before and I know it is impossible for me
(or to anybody) to support/maintain proprietary drivers for all OSes
and OS versions adequately.

What I *am* thinking about doing:

Provide a TCP-socket based interface in the digital RAS box so than an
application can open a socket (instead of opening a /dev/tty), connect
to the modems. We would also provide "AT session" emulation, so that
they look like regular modems.

That would require HylaFAX to support a new "class" of fax-modem that
is socket-attached (not tty-attached). I immagine that, while this is
not specially difficult, there is considerable work (in both the RAS
and application) to make that happen.

Because this solution uses TCP-socket (which is standard) instead of
proprietary tty-emulation drivers, it would require less OS-related
maintenance and would allow different applications and modem servers
to interoperate freely. I believe that is a better long-term solution
than TTY emulation.

The questions I have:

1) Is there enough demand for fax-over-T1 (in other words, is there
enough people using fax with 16+ phone lines at one location?) to
justify the effort?

2) Does anybody (a) see a problem with the solution proposed above?
(b) know of a better solution? I'm not sure this solution can address
fax reception properly.

At this point, I want to verify (1) and, provided there is enough
motivation, discuss (2). I don't know much about HylaFAX architecture
and fax protocols and I'll need help there.

Regards,

Marcio. 

--
_________________________________________________________

Marcio Saito
Director of Technology
voice (510) 770-9727 x214  mailto:marcio@cyclades.com
Cyclades Corporation http://www.cyclades.com
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