Hylafax & filePro vs. Vsifax

[Barry Wiseman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Aldridge" <tla at aldridgeinc.com>
To: "filepro-list" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 6:37 PM
Subject: OS: Hylafax & filePro vs. Vsifax


> Anyone out there using Hylafax instead of Vsifax for command line faxing
> from within filePro processing tables?
>
> I had been for years doing the following kind of thing using Vsifax.
However
> it's obvious that Vsifax converted to tiff format on the fly whereas
Hylafax
> does not.
>
> dofax::di=@id{@rn:
> ::system noredraw "touch /appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di:
> ::system noredraw "chmod 777 /appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di:
> ::printer file "/appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di:
> ::form "faxscreen":
> ::79=mid(9,"2","6"); 78=mid(9,"6","14"):
> ::fn(11,*)=79{78          'fax number:
> ::system noredraw "/usr/vsifax3/bin/vfx -s -M $LOGNAME -m fail -n "<fn<"
> /appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di:
> ::printer reset:
> ::system noredraw "rm /appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di:
> ::return:
> ::end:
>
> Hylafax syntax:
> ::system noredraw "sendfax -n -d "<fn<" /appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di:
>
> Thanks in advance for any help that might be offered.

You don't explain why your out.faxscreen output requires conversion to tif.
If it's ascii text, hylafax should handle it just fine.  Is it because you
have embedded pcl graphics?

I use hylafax extensively in my system, passing it documents in postscript,
pdf or even plain ascii text.  It will also accept tif but I avoid this
because I've run into scaling issues (resulting fax output image is not
8-1/2 x 11). The convert program (part of ImageMagick) will make pdf's from
tif's.

I use enscript, a text-to-postscript tool, to dress up filepro output with
font & pointsize control, rules & shading, but no positioning commands :-(.
It will do embedded graphics (e.g. letterhead), but the referenced graphic
object must be in eps (encapsulated postscript) format. Again, convert will
make postscript out of most any format, then the ps2epsi utility creates the
eps.  These files tend to be alarmingly large on disk, but the resulting
fax-format document that hylafax will generate is much smaller.  An enscript
print code table is pretty easy to hack together, let me know if you'd like
to see some samples of mine.

BTW, lines 2-4 of your code can be accomplished with much less typing like
this:

    ::printer "umask 0; cat >/appl/fpmerge/fpvsi"{di: