NAME¶
viewfax - display fax files in an X11 window
SYNOPSIS¶
viewfax [
-fnluirvW24] [
-hheight]
[
-wwidth] [
-zzoom]
[
-ddisplay] [
-gwxh+x+y]
[
-bbell] [
-mmemory]
filename...
DESCRIPTION¶
viewfax displays one or more fax files in an X11 window. The input files
may be either raw, single-page faxes received by a fax modem with a program
such as
mgetty(1), or tiff files such as those used by
hylafax.
The first (or only) page of "PC-Research"-style (DigiFAX) files
produced by the
ghostscript dfaxhigh or dfaxlow drivers can also be
displayed.
Input files using any common fax encoding such as group 3 (1 and 2 dimensional)
and group 4 can be displayed.
The fax images are rendered at full resolution and then successively scaled down
by a linear factor of 2 prior to display, until they fit on the screen. The
display can be controlled interactively using mouse and keyboard commands. The
left mouse button expands the image by a factor of two and the right button
reduces it by the same factor. If the image is bigger than the available
window size, the middle mouse button can be used to reposition it within the
window. Hold down the middle button while dragging the image to its new
position.
If the mouse has a scroll-wheel it can be used to move an oversized image
vertically. With the shift key depressed, the wheel scrolls through the pages.
The shift sense is inverted if
viewfax is started with
-W on the
command-line.
Further interaction is controlled by single-key commands:
- h or Help
- displays a page of help information. Type 'q' to return to the original
document.
- p or Prior or PgUP or - or BackSpace
- displays the previous page from the command-line list.
- n or Next or PgDn or + or space
- displays the next page from the command-line list.
- Shift HOME
- displays the first page from the command-line list.
- Shift END
- displays the last page from the command-line list.
- z
- zoom in (same as right mouse button).
- Shift Z
- zoom out (same as left mouse button).
- u
- turns the image upside down, which is useful if the fax was originally fed
the wrong way into the machine.
- Shift U
- turns this and all following pages upside down.
- l
- turns the image through 90 degrees, to view landscape text.
- Shift L
- turns this and all following pages sideways.
- m
- produce a left/right mirror image of the page.
- Shift M
- mirror this and all following pages.
- cursor arrows
- reposition the displayed image if it exceeds the window size.
- HOME
- repositions so that the top left corner is visible.
- END
- makes the bottom right corner visible.
- Print
- if the environment variable VIEWFAX_PRINT is defined, the current page is
printed. All pages are printed with Shift Print.
- e
- if the environment variable VIEWFAX_EDIT is defined, the current page is
passed to the editor. All input files can be edited with Shift e.
- q
- terminates the program.
- Shift Q
- terminates the program with non-zero exit status. Can be used to abort a
shell script, e.g. when the user is previewing an outbound fax and decides
not to send it.
OPTIONS¶
viewfax is designed to "do the right thing" when given just a
filename. Special cases can be handled with the following options. (Note that
tiff-files contain a header which overrides the
-f, -n, -h, -w, -l,
-m, and
-u flags.)
- -f
- indicates that raw input files are fine resolution (7.7 lines/mm) faxes.
This is the default unless the filename begins with "fn". Tiff
and "PC-Research" (DigiFAX) files are self-specifying.
- -n
- indicates that raw input files are normal resolution (3.85 lines/mm)
faxes. Each fax line is duplicated in the displayed image to give
approximately equal vertical and horizontal scales.
- -hheight
- specifies the number of fax lines. If this option is missing,
viewfax counts the number of lines in the input file.
- -wwidth
- specifies the number of pixels in each scan-line. The default value is
1728.
- -l
- display in landscape mode.
- -u
- turn the image upside down.
- -i
- invert pixels (black/white).
- -b
- preferred warning style: 'a' for audible bell (console beep), 'v' for
visible bell (flash the window), 'n' for neither. 'v' is the default.
- -d or -display
- use specified X server
- -g or -geometry
- the preferred size and position of the window, specified as
widthxheight+x+y. If a position is given (x
and y values), viewfax asks the window manager to place the window
there. The initial size of the window is constrained to be at most
widthx height.
If the window is subsequently resized due to the user zooming in or out, the
geometry is taken as a constraint on the screen area which may be used by
viewfax.
If you do not supply a geometry value, everything works fine with
ICCCM-compliant window managers like olwm, mwm, twm, and
tvtwm. When fully zoomed out the viewfax window will occupy
the entire screen.
Users of fvwm will notice that the title bar and left border are
moved off screen when viewfax repositions the window to (0,0). A
workaround is to use -geometry +5+23 when using fvwm. The proper
fix would be for someone to update the routine HandleConfigureRequest() in
fvwm/events.c to correspond to the code in twm/events.c.
- -mmemory limit
- each page is kept in memory after being fetched and expanded, which saves
time if the user returns to it in the same session. To prevent viewfax
from using all the available swap space, a limit is placed on the total
size of cached images. This defaults to 4 MBytes, enough for about 6
typical pages. If the memory limit is exceeded, old images are discarded
and must be reloaded from disk if the user returns to them. The operation
of this mechanism is transparent apart from the occasional delays due to
reloading. The value specified on the command line can be suffixed
k or m for kilo- or megabytes.
- -r
- the bit order of the bytes in the input file is reversed. The fax
specification deals only with serial data transmission. Modem
manufacturers have to decide whether the first bit received should be
placed in the most significant or the least significant position in a
byte. The consensus is to pack most significant first, but the -r flag is
available to deal with the opposite order.
- -v
- produce some informative messages (verbose mode).
- -zzoom
- specifies an initial zoom factor. A full-scale fax will usually not fit on
the screen. If the -z option is not specified, viewfax
scales the image by a power of 2 such that it is fully visible at a
reduced size. The user can then use the mouse buttons (see above) to view
expanded portions of the image.
- -2
- Assume that raw input files use group 3 two dimensional coding.
- -4
- Assume that raw input files use group 4 coding. The number of fax lines
(-h option) is required in this case.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- VIEWFAX_PRINT
- Defines a command that will print one or more fax pages.
- VIEWFAX_EDIT
- Defines a command that will calls an editor on one or more fax pages.
These two variables are optional. If a variable is undefined, the corresponding
keyboard command is ignored. If the variable is defined, it should contain the
name of a command or executable script that performs the desired function. The
command should process a single page if called with a -p
page-number argument. Alternatively, if can be called with just a list
of filenames, meaning that all pages should be processed.
Here is an oversimplified example of a print command. Note that it assumes that
the format is tiff and will fail when handed a raw fax file.
VIEWFAX_PRINT=printfax
/usr/local/bin/printfax:
#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
-p) shift
dopt=`expr $1 - 1`
shift
tiff2ps -d ${dopt} -2 -h 11.69 -w 8.27 "$1" | lp
;;
*) tiff2ps -2 -h 11.69 -w 8.27 "$*" | lp
;;
esac
SEE ALSO¶
mgetty (
http://alpha.greenie.net/mgetty/) controls data/fax/voice modems.
hylafax (
http://www.hylafax.org/) is a full-function fax client/server
system.
g3topbm(1) and
xv(1) can be used in a pipeline to view faxes. This
will usually be slower than using
viewfax, but
xv has many
capabilities for manipulating the image and saving it in other formats.
faxview.tcl,
(
ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/unix/networking/mgetty/faxview.tcl.gz) a simple
dialog for viewing FAX messages by Ralph Schleicher (rs@purple.in-ulm.de).
This is a useful tool which provides a file menu from which incoming faxes can
be selected for display with
viewfax.
CCITT (now ITU) Recommendation T.4,
Standardization of Group 3 Facsimile
Apparatus for Document Transmission.
CCITT (now ITU) Recommendation T.6,
Facsimile Coding Schemes and Coding
Control Functions for Group 4 Facsimile Apparatus.
BUGS¶
The user interface does not comply with any known style guide.
The help text looks moth-eaten because it is encoded as a fax. This avoids
dealing with X11 fonts.
The program does not refer to the X resources database.
AUTHOR¶
Frank D. Cringle (fdc@cliwe.ping.de).