hylafax-client

Langue: en

Autres versions - même langue

Version: May 8, 1996 (debian - 07/07/09)

Section: 1 (Commandes utilisateur)

NAME

HylaFAX-client - introduction to HylaFAX client applications and usage

SYNOPSIS

sendfax [options] [files...]
sendpage [options] [message...]
faxstat [options]
faxrm [options]
faxalter [options] jobid...
fax2ps [options] [files...]

DESCRIPTION

HylaFAX is a telecommunication system for UNIX® systems. Among the features of HylaFAX are:
HylaFAX runs as a network service; this means a modem may be effectively shared by a large number of users.
HylaFAX can be configured to work with a wide variety of modems on a wide variety of systems.
Access to the system can be restricted by the administrator to selected hosts and/or users.
Transmission requests may be processed immediately (default) or queued for processing at a later time, in the manner of the at(1) command.
Remote facsimile machines may be polled to retrieve publicly available documents.
POSTSCRIPT®, PDF, and TIFF Class F documents are passed directly to the fax server for transmission; the system attempts to convert other file formats to either POSTSCRIPT or TIFF through the use of an extensible file typing and conversion facility. In normal operation ASCII-text, troff(1) output, and Silicon Graphics images are automatically converted. Additional file formats can be added; see typerules(5).
The faxcover(1) program can be automatically invoked to create a cover page for each facsimile, using information deduced by the sendfax command. Alternatively, users may supply their own cover pages using their preferred tools.
Facsimile are normally imaged in a system-default page size (usually letter-size pages, 8.5" by 11", for sites in North America). Alternate page sizes can be specified with a -s option to all HylaFAX programs. Well known page sizes include: ISO A3, ISO A4, ISO A5, ISO A6, ISO B4, North American Letter, American Legal, American Ledger, American Executive, Japanese Letter, and Japanese Legal. Note that it may not be permissible to image into the full page area; the guaranteed reproducible area for a page is typically smaller. Also, note that while arbitrary page sizes can be specified, only a limited number of page dimensions are supported by the facsimile protocol. Thus if an odd-size facsimile is submitted for transmission it may not be possible to determine if it can be sent until the fax server establishes communication with the remote facsimile machine.
Facsimile can be sent at low resolution (98 lines/inch) or medium resolution (196 lines/inch)---often called fine mode. Documents with mixed resolution pages are handled correctly.
Users are notified by electronic mail if a job can not be transmitted. It is also possible to receive notification by mail when a job has been completed successfully and each time that the job is requeued for retransmission. Any untransmitted documents are returned to the sender by electronic mail in a form suitable for resubmission.
Support is provided for broadcasting facsimile. The HylaFAX server software optimizes preparation of broadcast documents and the client applications support the notion of a job group which permits a group of jobs to be manipulated together.
Support is provided for transmitting alpha-numeric messages to pager devices or GSM mobiles using the Simple Network Paging Protocol (SNPP) and the IXO or UCP protocol (for message delivery).

The HylaFAX software is divided into two packages: software used on client machines and software used on machines where one or more modems reside. Client software includes:

sendfax, a program to submit outgoing facsimile;
sendpage, a program to submit alpha-numeric messages to SNPP servers;
faxstat, a program obtain status information about HylaFAX servers;
faxrm, a program to remove jobs and documents;
faxalter, a program to change parameters of queued jobs; and
fax2ps, a program that converts facsimile documents to POSTSCRIPT so that they may be viewed with a POSTSCRIPT previewer or printed on a POSTSCRIPT printer (this program is actually part of the companion TIFF distribution that is used by HylaFAX).

Many systems also support submission of outgoing facsimile by electronic mail and/or graphical interfaces to the sendfax program. Such facilities are site-dependent; consult local documentation for more information.

GETTING STARTED

To use the HylaFAX client software on your machine you need to either load the appropriate software on your machine, or you need to locate a machine that already has the client software installed and setup symbolic links to the appropriate directories. If you choose the latter, then beware that you need links to three directories: the directory where client applications reside, /usr/bin, the directory where the client application database files reside, /etc/hylafax, and the directory where document conversion programs reside, /usr/sbin (the last two directories may be the same on your system).

Once the software is setup on your machine you need to locate a host that has a facsimile server that you can use. The host, and possibly the modem on the host, should be defined in your environment in the FAXSERVER variable. For example, for csh users,

setenv FAXSERVER flake.asd

or for ksh or sh users,

FAXSERVER=flake.asd; export FAXSERVER

If there are multiple modems on your server then you may be assigned to use a specific modem. For example, if you are to use the modem attached to the ttym2 port on the server machine, then the FAXSERVER variable should be setup as

FAXSERVER=ttym2@flake.asd; export FAXSERVER

(Note: the SNPPSERVER environment variable is used instead of FAXSERVER by the sendpage program; consult sendpage(8) for more information.)

Note also, that before you can submit outgoing facsimile jobs the administrator for the facsimile server may need to register your identity in an access control list. You will encounter the message ``530 User %s access denied.'' if access to your server is controlled and you are not properly registered or you may be prompted for a password and then denied service with ``530 Login incorrect.''.

DIAL STRINGS

A dial string specifies how to dial the telephone in order to reach a destination facsimile machine. HylaFAX permits arbitrary strings to be passed to the facsimile server so that users can specify credit card information, PBX routing information, etc. Alphabetic characters are automatically mapped to their numeric key equivalents (e.g. ``1800GotMilk'' becomes ``18004686455''). Other characters can be included for readability; anything that must be stripped will be removed by the server before the dialing string is passed to the fax modem. Private information such as credit card access codes are withheld from status messages and publicly accessible log files (with proper configuration). Facsimile servers also automatically insert any leading dialing prefixing strings that are required to place outgoing phone calls; e.g. dialing ``9'' to get an outside line. Additionally, if a phone number is fully specified with the international direct dialing digits (IDDD), then any prefixing long distance or international dialing codes that are required to place the call will be inserted in the dial string by the server. For example, ``+31.77.594.131'' is a phone number in the Netherlands; it would be converted to ``0113177594131'' if the call is placed in the United States. The number ``+14159657824'' is a phone number in California; if this number is called from within the 415 area code in the United States, then the server would automatically convert this to ``9657824'' because in the San Francisco Bay Area, local phone calls must not include the area code and long distance prefixing code.

The general rule in crafting dial strings is to specify exactly what you would dial on your telephone; and, in addition, the actual phone number can be specified in a location-independent manner by using the IDD syntax of ``+country-code local-part''.

COVER PAGES

The sendfax program can automatically generate a cover page for each outgoing facsimile. Such cover pages are actually created by the faxcover(1) program by using information that is deduced by sendfax and information that is supplied on the command line invocation of sendfax. Users may also request that sendfax not supply a cover page and then provide their own cover page as part of the data that is to be transmitted.

Automatically-generated cover pages may include the following information:

the sender's name, affiliation, geographic location, fax number, and voice telephone number;
the recipient's name, affiliation, geographic location, fax number, and voice telephone number;
text explaining what this fax is ``regarding'';
text commentary;
the local date and time that the job was submitted;
the number of pages to be transmitted.

Certain of this information is currently obtained from a user's personal facsimile database file; ~/.faxdb. Note that this file is deprecated; it is described here only because it is still supported for compatibility with older versions of the software.

The .faxdb file is an ASCII file with entries of the form

keyword : value

where keyword includes:

Name
a name associated with destination fax machine;
Company
a company name;
Location
in-company locational information, e.g. a building#;
FAX-Number
phone number of fax machine;
Voice-Number
voice telephone number.

Data is free format. Whitespace (blank, tab, newline) can be freely interspersed with tokens. If tokens include whitespace, they must be enclosed in quote marks (``"''). The ``#'' character introduces a comment---everything to the end of the line is discarded.

Entries are collected into aggregate records by enclosing them in ``[]''. Records can be nested to create a hierarchy that that supports the inheritance of information---unspecified information is inherited from parent aggregate records.

For example, a sample file might be:

 
[ Company: "Silicon Graphics, Inc." Location: "Mountain View, California" [ Name: "Sam Leffler" FAX-Number: +1.415.965.7824 ] ]

 
 
which could be extended to include another person at Silicon Graphics with the following:

 

 
 
Experience indicates that the hierarchical nature of this database format makes it difficult to maintain with automated mechanisms. As a result it is being replaced by other, more straightforward databases that are managed by programs that front-end the sendfax program.

CONFIGURATION FILES


 
 HylaFAX client applications can be tailored on a per-user and
 per-site basis through configuration files.
 Per-site controls are placed in the file
 /etc/hylafax/hyla.conf,
 
 while per-user controls go in
 ~/.hylarc.
 
 In addition a few programs that have many parameters that are
 specific to their operation support an additional configuration
 file; these files are identified in their manual pages.
 
Configuration files have a simple format and are entirely ASCII. A configuration parameter is of the form

tag: value

where a tag identifies a parameter and a value is either a string, number, or boolean value. Comments are introduced by the ``#'' character and extend to the end of the line. String values start at the first non-blank character after the ``:'' and continue to the first non-whitespace character or, if whitespace is to be included, may be enclosed in quote marks (``"''). String values enclosed in quote marks may also use the standard C programming conventions for specifying escape codes; e.g. ``\n'' for a newline character and ``\xxx'' for an octal value. Numeric values are specified according to the C programming conventions (leading ``0x'' for hex, leading ``0'' for octal, otherwise decimal). Boolean values are case insensitive. For a true value, either ``Yes'' or ``On'' should be used. For a false value, use ``No'' or ``Off''.

RECEIVED FACSIMILE


 
 Incoming facsimile are received by facsimile servers and deposited
 in a receive queue directory on the server machine.
 Depending on the server's configuration, files in this directory
 may or may not be readable by normal users.
 The
 faxstat
 
 program can be used to view the contents of the receive queue
 directory:
 

 

 
 
Consult the faxstat manual page for a more detailed description of this information.
Received facsimile are stored as TIFF Class F files. These files are bilevel images that are encoded using the CCITT T.4 or CCITT T.6 encoding algorithms. The fax2ps(1) program can be used to view and print these files. A file can be viewed by converting it to POSTSCRIPT and then viewing it with a suitable POSTSCRIPT previewing program, such as xpsview(1) (Adobe's Display POSTSCRIPT-based viewer), ghostview(1) (a public domain previewer), or image viewer programs such as viewfax(1) (public domain), faxview(1) (another public domain TIFF viewer program), xv(1) (shareware and/or public domain), or xtiff(1) (a program included in the public domain TIFF software distribution). Consult your local resources to figure out what tools are available for viewing and printing received facsimile.

CLIENT-SERVER PROTOCOL


 
 HylaFAX client applications communicate with servers using
 either a special-purpose
 communications protocol
 
 that is modeled after the Internet File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
 or, when submitting alpha-numeric pages, the Simple Network Paging Protocol
 (SNPP), specified in
 RFC
 1861.
 All client programs support a
 -v
 
 option that can be used to observe the protocol message exchanges.
 In some situations it may be more effective to communicate directly
 with a HylaFAX server using the client-server protocol.
 This can be accomplished with an
 FTP
 or Telnet client application; though an
 FTP
 client is recommended because it implements the protocol needed
 to obtain server status information.
 For information on the server-side support provided with HylaFAX consult
 hfaxd(8).
 
 For documentation on the client-server fax protocol consult RFC XXXX
 (to be filled in).
 

EXAMPLES


 
 This section gives several examples of command line usage;
 consult the manual pages for the individual commands for
 information on the options and program operation.
 
The following command queues the file zall.ps for transmission to John Doe at the number (123)456-7890 using fine mode; the server will attempt to send it at 4:30 A.M.:
sendfax -a "0430" -m -d "John Doe@1.123.456.7890" zall.ps

 
 
(the leading ``1.'' is supplied to dial area code ``123'' in the United States.)
The following command generates a one-page facsimile that is just a cover page:

 

 
 
(note that the line was broken into several lines solely for presentation.)
The following command displays the status of the facsimile server and any jobs queued for transmission:
faxstat -s

 
 
The following command displays the status of the facsimile server and any documents waiting in the receive queue on the server machine:
faxstat -r

 
 
The following command shows how to use an FTP client program to communicate directly with a HylaFAX server:

 

 
 
The following command shows how to use a Telnet client program to communicate directly with an SNPP server:

 
 
 

FILES


 
 
 
 

 /usr/bin/sendfax                for sending facsimile
 /usr/bin/sendpage               for sending alpha-numeric pages
 /usr/bin/fax2ps                 for converting facsimile to POSTSCRIPT
 /usr/bin/faxalter               for altering queued jobs
 /usr/bin/faxcover               for generating cover sheets
 /usr/bin/faxmail                for converting email to POSTSCRIPT
 /usr/bin/faxrm                  for removing queued jobs
 /usr/bin/faxstat                for facsimile server status
 /usr/sbin/sgi2fax               SGI image file converter
 /usr/sbin/textfmt               ASCII text converter
 /etc/hylafax/typerules          file type and conversion rules
 /etc/hylafax/pagesizes          page size database
 /etc/hylafax/faxcover.ps        prototype cover page
 /etc/hylafax/dialrules          optional client dialstring rules
 /var/spool/hylafax/tmp/sndfaxXXXXXXtemporary files
 

 
 

SEE ALSO


 
 at(1),
 
 fax2ps(1),
 
 faxalter(1),
 
 faxcover(1),
 
 faxmail(1),
 
 faxrm(1),
 
 faxstat(1),
 
 sgi2fax(1),
 
 faxq(8),
 
 viewfax(1),
 
 hylafax-server(5),
 
 dialrules(5),
 
 pagesizes(5),
 
 typerules(5),
 
 services(4)