NAME¶
faxcover - generate a POSTSCRIPT cover page for an outgoing facsimile
SYNOPSIS¶
faxcover [
options ]
-f from-name -n
fax-number
DESCRIPTION¶
faxcover generates a POSTSCRIPT® cover page document on the standard
output. The cover page fills the entire area of a default page and is created
according to the information supplied on the command line and a
cover sheet
template file.
faxcover is normally invoked by the
sendfax(1) program to generate
a cover page for each outgoing facsimile.
faxcover works by creating a POSTSCRIPT dictionary that contains
definitions for the variable information that is to be placed on the facsimile
cover page. Specifically, a dictionary with the following symbols are defined:
Symbol Description Symbol Description
to destination person from sending person
to-company destination company from-company sender's company
to-location destination geographic location from-location sender geographic location
to-voice-number person's voice phone number from-voice-number sender's voice phone number
to-fax-number destination fax phone number from-fax-number sender's fax phone number
from-mail-address sender's e-mail address
comments unbroken comment string commentsX X'th line of comments
regarding Re: subject CommentX similar to commentsX
pageWidth page width in millimeters page-count # pages other than cover page
pageLength page length in millimeters todays-date current date and time
If the
comments string is longer than
maxlencomments characters,
it is broken, on word boundaries or instances of ``\n´´, into
multiple POSTSCRIPT strings
commentsX where
X is the line
number; e.g.
comments2 for the second line of comments. Long substrings
without whitespace which exceed
maxlencomments are also broken. By
default
faxcover will generate 20
commentsX strings, emitting
null string values for empty lines. This number can be changed with the
-m option; see below.
maxlencomments is changed with the
-z option; see below.
Note that use of
commentsX with non-fixed-width fonts can lead to spatial
problems where characters run off the edge of the generated cover page. In
such cases, use of
BreakIntoLines (see below) may be a more suitable
approach.
CommentX is similar to
commentsX except that its values are
created only by breaking
comments on instances of ``\n´´ and
not otherwise.
maxlines does not affect
CommentX
faxcover also emits a POSTSCRIPT procedure for breaking comment strings
into multiple lines using the POSTSCRIPT font metric information. This
procedure is named
BreakIntoLines and has the following usage
convention:
%<line-width> <line-height> <x> <y> <string>
BreakIntoLines -
eg
/rule (_____________________________________________) def
/lw rule stringwidth pop def /lh 30 def
/y 191.4 def /x 0 def
y -30 0 { x exch moveto rule show } for
lw lh x y comments BreakIntoLines
where the width of the rule controls the length of each line of comments (note
that it is made slightly shorter here for the purpose of presentation),
x and
y are initialized to coordinate locations on the page
where the comment string should be imaged, and the number 30 is the inter-line
spacing appropriate for the font used to image the comment lines.
If information is unavailable for an item, the associated POSTSCRIPT symbol is
defined to be a null string.
Following the definition prologue, a cover sheet template file is copied. This
file is expected to be a POSTSCRIPT program that uses the generated strings to
create a cover page. The template must include a
showpage operator to
cause the page to be imaged. The above symbols will be defined in the
current dictionary. A trailing
end operator is supplied by
faxcover, so any manipulation of the dictionary stack should leave the
current dictionary on the top of the stack on completion.
OPTIONS¶
- -c comments
- Use comments for the comment string. You may use
'\n' to break it into several lines on generated the cover page.
- -C file
- Use file as the template file. The default template
file is named faxcover.ps. The template file can also be specified
by setting the FAXCOVER environment variable. If the
template filename is not an absolute pathname, then faxcover looks
first for this file in the home directory of the sender. If no such file
is present, then it looks in the library directory where the
HylaFAX client application data are installed. If no template file
is located, faxcover will terminate without generating a cover
page.
- -D format
- Use format as the formatting specification passed to
strftime(3) when generating the time and date placed on the cover
page.
- -f name
- Use name for the sender's identity.
- -l location
- Use location for the geographic location of the
destination company.
- -L location
- Use location for the geographic location of the
sender's company.
- -m maxlines
- indicates the maximum number of commentsX lines to
generate.
- -M address
- Use address for the sender's e-mail address.
- -n number
- Use number for the destination fax machine
number.
- -N number
- Use number for the sender's fax machine number.
- -p count
- Use count for the count of pages to follow the cover
page.
- -r regarding
- Use regarding for the ``Re:'' field.
- -s size
- Set the page size to use for the transmitted facsimile.
Facsimile are normally imaged with a system-default page size (usually
letter-size pages, 8.5" by 11", for sites in North America).
Alternate page sizes are specified symbolically using either the name or
abbreviation of an entry in the pagesizes(5) database; e.g.
a3 (ISO A3), a4 (ISO A4), a5 (ISO A5), a6 (ISO
A6), b4 (ISO B4), na-let (North American Letter),
us-leg (American Legal), us-led (American Ledger),
us-exe (American Executive), jp-let (Japanese Letter), and
jp-leg (Japanese Legal). Comparisons are case-insensitive and any
match of a substring of the full page-size name is sufficient; e.g.
``legal'' would match ``American Legal''.
- Note that it may not be permissible to image into the full
page area; the guaranteed reproducible area for a page is typically inset.
Also, note that while arbitrary page sizes can be specified through the
page size database, only a limited set of page dimensions are supported by
the Group 3 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.
- -t name
- Use name for the receiver's identity.
- -v number
- Use number for the receiver's voice phone
number.
- -V number
- Use number for the sender's voice phone number.
- -x company
- Use company for the destination company name.
- -X company
- Use company for the sender's company name.
- -z maxlencomments
- indicates the maximum length in number of characters
allowed in a commentsX string.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
Complaints about not being able to locate a template file.
FILES¶
~/.faxdb personal fax number database
~/.hylarc per-user configuration file
/etc/hylafax/hyla.conf system-wide configuration file
/etc/hylafax/faxcover.ps default cover page template
/etc/hylafax/pagesizes page size database
BUGS¶
faxcover should be able to determine the appropriate length of
commentsX strings by using font metric information.
SEE ALSO¶
hylafax-client(1),
sendfax(1) edit-faxcover(1)