fax4CUPS

[John Conover]

Gert Cuykens writes:
> On Apr 10, 2005 9:58 PM, Chris <racerx at makeworld.com> wrote:
> > Gert Cuykens wrote:
> > > Can we have this in ports ?
> > >
> > > http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/fax4CUPS/
> > 
> > Are you volunteering?
> > 
> > Anything is possible, but nothing is easy.
> > 
> 
> How do you mean ?
> 
> I did not install it yet but it sounds useful if cups could handle a
> serial fax like a printer :)
> 
> Aldo i think the script can only send faxes and not handle incoming
> faxes like printing them or sending them to a mailbox directory. But i
> am sure you can add some magic faxing features to it :)
> 
> 10$ its going to be a popular port and for people like you not that
> hart to add some fax incomming features :) With a little bit of luck
> you don't have to compile anything :)

It does work well, (as per the sparse docs in the tar file.) You can
use efax for incoming faxes, (or better, hylafax, if you can talk
root at heaven.org into coming down and configuring it for you,) and the
fax4CUPS does appear as a printer according to lpstat -a, and does
send faxes, (saved as a postscript file out of openoffice.org, etc.)
You will have to use cup's lpr -j option to tell it the "fax printer"
what number to send the fax to, (so you will probably have to
configure a printer in everyone's openoffice.org, etc.)

The lpadmin command to install the cups/efax printer is:

    lpadmin -p efax -L machine -D fax -E -v efax:/dev/ttyXX -m efax.ppd

Where efax.ppd is installed in probably /usr/share/cups/model/, and
the efax script, (with the first 8 lines modified for your
configuration,) installed in probably /usr/lib/cups/backend/.

Note: if "efax answer" is running on /dev/ttyXX from /etc/inittab, it
may be necessary to disable "efax answer" for the lpadmin command, but
only to install the "fax printer," (apparently, lpadmin doesn't like
other things listening on its serial printer ports when it installs
the printer.)

If you use efax or hylafax for incoming, enable MIME e-mailing of the
fax to a faxmaster, who distributes the file to the appropriate
machine-its default for hylafax. For efax, configure /etc/efax.rc and
/usr/bin/fax, (these are some script changes,) to send the fax
attachment as a postscript file so they can be read with
gv/ghostscript, (which probably came with your cups installation.) The
efax/tiff file formats come out half size if a low resolution fax is
received, which is corrected if postscript is used.

Recommendation: YMMV, but hylafax is a bit difficult to configure, but
is very robust once running; efax is probably preferable for
non-industrial strength applications.

FWIW ...

     John

-- 

John Conover, conover at rahul.net, http://www.johncon.com/