We at EverythingLinux receive faxes using Hylafax and until recently used to automatically print them on the laser printer. Now we're storing them in an incoming directory on our terminal server as TIF files. This has lead to a slight problem with some staff not coping with it, and part of that is just people being used to seeing them on paper and part is not having a solution that really covers everything we need to do.
We're OK at this stage with the concept of manually routing faxes to relevant areas. IE we only have one fax number and we're not doing OCR, although we could use the fax ID strings people sometimes set in their machines. So far I've narrowed my application suite for dealing with faxes down to 3 applications, one in-house one that basically moves the fax file to an attachment directory for a given order in the system so we can view the faxes to do with an order by viewing the order in our system. The other two things are Nautilus/eog and Qfaxreader (called from in-house app as viewer). Nautilius (the file manager in Gnome) is a great graphical file manager and latest versions even show preview images of the faxes, once a fax is selected to view (eog) I haven't found a way to view anything other than the first page and it would be nice to see all the other fax attributes. Later versions thankfully allow rotation too. EOG also has a fantastic interactive zoom facility with the mouse scroll wheel - try with any image - very impressive. It's disadvantage is all these bells & whistles make it quite a big app and load time too long to call as a quick fax viewer. I should also check on bug reports. Qfaxreader is a pretty cool fax viewer, shows all the fax attributes, has sensible rotate buttons, can print although it can't seem to make sense of our printer queues and therefore can't select which printer to print to (thankfully prints to default printer). It's light weight & fast to load but I need to be able to move faxes from one directory to another which it doesen't do. I'll be filing a bug report or two on it. Does anyone have any suggestions on either file managers that do faxes well or fax viewers that do file management ok (copy, move, delete, send to email, print) - perhaps some perl/python/php libraries to read & display fax TIF files (or I can convert to PDF). I was reluctant, but will consider web based stuff - must be able to do rotate & zoom though and I feel a web interface isn't good for that. I might start exploring php script options (without using a web server) if I can find the time. I guess the next logical step is to be able to edit & re-send faxes - looking at xfax (about 2 years since last work done on it). EG please sign & fax back. -- ---<GRiP>--- ** ROOM FOR RENT $120pw (neg) near Newington Shops 525/401 buses ** Grant Parnell - senior consultant EverythingLinux services - the consultant's backup & tech support. Web: http://www.everythinglinux.com.au/support.php We're also busybits.com.au and linuxhelp.com.au and elx.com.au. Phone 02 8756 3522 to book service or discuss your needs. ELX or its employees participate in the following:- OSIA (Open Source Industry Australia) - http://www.osia.net.au AUUG (Australian Unix Users Group) - http://www.auug.org.au SLUG (Sydney Linux Users Group) - http://www.slug.org.au LA (Linux Australia) - http://www.linux.org.au -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
