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.
FILES¶
The fax script will `source' the optional shell scripts
/etc/efax.rc,
~/.efaxrc and/or
./.efaxrc before processing command-line
arguments. These files can be used to set script variables to custom values
for a particular system, user and/or directory.
The following files are created in the FAXDIR spool directory when automatic fax
reception is enabled (see the fax script). DEV represents the name of the fax
modem device file in /dev (e.g. cua1 for /dev/cua1).
- DEV.n
- the log file created by the fax answer daemon with process
id n
- DEV.log
- contains collected log files for device DEV. Log files
showing a termination status of 1 (device busy) or 4 (no response from
modem) are not added to this file.
- DEV.stop
- created by the fax stop command to prevent the fax daemon
from starting up.
AUTHOR¶
Fax was written by Ed Casas. Please send comments or bug reports to edc@cce.com.
Please describe the type of modem used and include a copy of the log file.
COPYRIGHT¶
Fax is copyright 1993 -- 1999 by Ed Casas. It may be used, copied and modified
under the terms of the GNU Public License.
DISCLAIMER¶
Although
fax has been tested, it may have errors that will prevent it
from working correctly on your system. Some of these errors may cause serious
problems including loss of data and interruptions to telephone service.
SEE ALSO¶
efax(1), efix(1), ghostscript(1).
BUGS¶
See
efax(1).