fax - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

fax - make, send, receive, view or print a fax

SYNOPSIS

fax help

fax make [-l] file

fax send [-l] [-v] { -m | number } filename...

fax [ receive [-v] [ filename-prefix ] ]

fax { print | view | rm } filename...

fax { queue | status [t] | start | stop }

fax answer

OPTIONS

-l use low (96 line per inch) resolution

-v display verbose messages for debugging

-m the phone call has already been dialed manually

The commands make, send, receive, view and queue may be abbreviated to their first
characters (e.g. ``fax q'').

Assignments of the form VARIABLE=value may appear before the command name to temporarily
change the values of most fax script variables (e.g. ``fax PAGE=a4 print letter.001'')

DESCRIPTION

fax provides a simple user interface to the efax(1) and efix(1) programs. It allows you
to send text or Postscript files as faxes and receive, print or preview received faxes.
The fax help command prints a summary of the possible commands.

To send a fax, the original files need to be converted from ASCII or Postscript into a
particular bit-map format (TIFF with Group 3 encoding). This can be done automatically by
the fax send command or you can use the fax make command to do the conversion before
sending the fax. The conversion will create one file per page. These files will have the
name of the original file with the page number as an additional suffix. For example,
running fax make doc.ps on the two-page postscript file doc.ps would generate the files
doc.ps.001 and doc.ps.002.

When sending a fax with the fax send command you may dial the number manually and use the
-m option or you may give the phone number on the command line. The names of the files to
be sent are given on the command line, usually by using wildcards. For example, to send a
multi-page fax consisting of the files doc.ps.001, doc.ps.002, and so on, you could use
the command fax send 555-1212 doc.ps.0* (if you had already run the fax make command) or
simply fax send 555-1212 doc.ps. If the number is busy the script will wait and try
again.

Use the fax receive command to answer the phone and receive a fax. If a file name is
specified the received fax will be stored in files with the given file name plus an
extension equal to the page number. If no options are given, the received fax will be
stored in files having a name given by the date and time and an extension equal to the
page number. For example, a fax received beginning on July 4 at 3:05:20 pm will generate
files 0704150520.001, 0704150520.002, and so on.

The fax print, fax view, and fax rm commands are used to print, preview or remove received
fax files. As with the send command the file names are usually given using wildcards.

If efax has been installed for automatic fax reception you can use the fax queue command
to check for files in the incoming spool directory. The fax script can also be configured
to print received faxes or e-mail them as MIME attachments with type image/tiff-f. For
convenience the fax print, view and rm commands will first check for the named files in
this spool directory. The fax status command shows the status of the automatic receive
process once, or every t seconds. Privileged users can use the fax stop and fax start
commands to stop and restart the fax reception daemon.

The fax answer command is used for unattended reception of faxes. It is normally placed
in the inittab(5) or ttytab(5) file and is run automatically by init(8).

The -v option displays verbose messages.

Other features of the fax script are documented within the script:

- a directory that lets you specify recipients by name instead of number

- the fax new command to create a simple cover page and start up a text editor

- the fax makefont command converts a Postscript font to a bit-mapped font for use in
headers or text

RESOLUTION

Faxes can be created at low (98 lines per inch) or high (196 lpi) resolution. Almost all
fax machines will operate at either resolution. By default files are created at high
resolution but you can use the optional -l argument to create files at low resolution.

SESSION LOGS

The modem commands and responses together with status and error messages are written to
file. If the fax is successfully sent or received the log file is removed. Otherwise a
message is printed showing the log file name. Please send a copy of this file when
reporting problems with efax.

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