hylafax-client - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

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=[email protected]; 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:
[ Company: "Silicon Graphics, Inc."
Location: "Mountain View, California"
[ Name: "Sam Leffler" FAX-Number: +1.415.965.7824 ]
[ Name: "Paul Haeberli" FAX-Number: +1.415.965.7824 ]
]

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:
hyla% faxstat -r
HylaFAX scheduler on hyla.chez.sgi.com: Running
Modem ttyf2 (+1 510 999-0123): Running and idle

Protect Page Owner Sender/TSI Recvd@ Filename
-rw-r-- 9 fax 1 510 5268781 05Jan96 fax00005.tif
-rw-r-- 8 fax 1 510 5268781 07Jan96 fax00009.tif
-rw-r-- 2 fax 1 510 5268781 07Jan96 fax00010.tif
-rw-r-- 3 fax +14159657824 08Jan96 fax00011.tif
-rw-r-- 2 fax +14159657824 08Jan96 fax00012.tif

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 [email protected]" 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:
faxcover -t "John Doe" -n "(123)456-7890"
-c "Sorry John, I forgot the meeting..." |
sendfax -n -d "(123)456-7890"
(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:
hyla% ftp localhost hylafax
Connected to localhost.
220 hyla.chez.sgi.com server (HylaFAX (tm) Version 4.0beta005) ready.
Name (localhost:sam):
230 User sam logged in.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> dir sendq
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening new data connection for "sendq".
208 126 S sam 5268781 0:3 1:12 16:54 No local dialtone
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> quote jkill 208
200 Job 208 killed.
ftp> dir doneq
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening new data connection for "doneq".
208 126 D sam 5268781 0:3 1:12 No local dialtone
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> quote jdele 208
200 Job 208 deleted; current job: (default).
ftp> dir docq
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening new data connection for "docq".
-rw---- 1 sam 11093 Jan 21 16:48 doc9.ps
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> dele docq/doc9.ps
250 DELE command successful.
ftp> dir recvq
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening new data connection for "recvq".
-rw-r-- 4 fax 1 510 5268781 30Sep95 faxAAAa006uh
-rw-r-- 9 fax +14159657824 11Nov95 faxAAAa006nC
-rw---- 25 fax +14159657824 Fri08PM fax00016.tif
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.

The following command shows how to use a Telnet client program to communicate directly
with an SNPP server:
hyla% telnet melange.esd 444
Trying 192.111.25.40...
Connected to melange.esd.sgi.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 melange.esd.sgi.com SNPP server (HylaFAX (tm) Version 4.0beta010) ready.
login sam
230 User sam logged in.
help
214 The following commands are recognized (* =>'s unimplemented).
214 2WAY* ALER* DATA HOLD LOGI MSTA* PING RTYP* STAT
214 ABOR CALL* EXPT* KTAG* MCRE* NOQU* QUIT SEND SUBJ
214 ACKR* COVE* HELP LEVE MESS PAGE RESE SITE
250 Direct comments to [email protected].
page 5551212
250 Pager ID accepted; provider: 1800SkyTel pin: 5551212 jobid: 276.
send
250 Message processing completed.
quit
221 Goodbye.
Connection closed by foreign host.

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