webinterface for mgetty+sendfax+...

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gert@greenie.muc.de (Gert Doering) writes:
>> Frank D. Cringle wrote:
>> > neko@greenie.muc.de (Simone Demmel) writes:
>> > > [ wants a web interface to view faxes ]
>> > Here is a quick and dirty solution for those blessed with suitable
>> > free software (apache on the server-side, viewfax on the
>> > client-side).
>
>... and what to do with Windoze clients? Or client machines that have no
>viewfax installed?

Use some other helper program that can display g3 files. If you don't
have one, you lose.

Actually, there is a problem with the simple configuration I
described: it does not distinguish between fine and normal mode faxes.
Viewfax understands the filename convention used by mgetty, but the
filename in this case is just a random string generated by the client
browser. Thus normal-mode faxes get displayed half-height.

There is way around this problem, that also improves compression and
cuts down on the size of the directory listing. Write a script that
calls fax2tiff[*] to bundle up received fax pages into a multi-page
tiff file, g4 encoded and vertically expanded if necessary. Have
mgetty call the script via FAX_NOTIFY_PROGRAM and deposit them in a
directory that the web server can access. The configuration can be
simpler because you get to choose the extension of the filenames. A
slight complication is that if you use .tif (or .tiff) it will
probably be interpreted as mime-type image/tiff, and viewfax is not a
general tiff viewer. That is not a problem when viewing faxes but
would be if you encounter a non-fax tiff file when the browser is set
up to call viewfax. Either live with that or invent an extension
(.tff) and mime type (image/tiff-f) and configure the server and
browser appropriately.

>(Being heretic today...)

Please remain calm (and don't get agitated because I used the
t... word ;-)


[*] Available with libtiff at ftp://ftp.sgi.com/graphics/tiff

-- 
Frank Cringle, fdc@cliwe.ping.de
voice: (+49 2304) 467101; fax: 943357
.