Sendinga fax
XFAX- User’s Guide 4.3a 12
4. Sending a fax
Many of the fax messages that are sent are of a very simple nature . They may
involveconfirmation of an agreed time, an order, cancellation or similar,which
onlytakes up a couple of lines. In such cases it should be possible, by means of a
simplemanipulation, to send just such a fax from the command line or from your
favourite word processor, with the minimum of work on the part of the user.
The systemcan convert text files with the HP Laserjet PCL commands - to be
more precisethe commands that are generated by an HP Laserjet or HP Laserjet
Plus printer.This means that HP Laserjet printouts from within another program
such as aword processor can be sent direct to XFAX with precisely the same
resultsas if they had been printedout on the laser printer. The only difference is
that theresolution on a fax is 200 dpi (dots per inch) as opposed to a laser
printer’s300 dpi or more. Lists of the commands that are supported are given in
the appendix.For a more detaileddescription of the PCL standard you are
referred to printer manuals or similar.
The typefacesthat accompany XFAX are the same as the typefaces found in the
Z1A typefacecassette from Microsoft.
The command faxsend converts files to the fax format and asks the fax se rver to
place the final fax in a queue awaiting transm ission. When the time for transmit-
ting is reached (normally immediately) an attem pt is made to send the fax. If the
transmissionis successful the fax is removed from the transmission queue and
the statisticis saved in the statistics file. On the other hand if the attempt is not
successful, the fax is given a new time for a new at tempt. The new time becomes
the currenttime plus the number of minutes given by the keyword
RETRY_TIMEin the configuration file. When the maximum number of
attempts, given by the keyword MAX_TRIES, has been reache dt he fax is
moved from the transmissionqueue to the queue for unsuccessful faxes. A copy
of the faxis saved in the directory “Fax” (see also FAIL_DIR) underthe home
directoryfor the user who first placed the fax in the queue. This user can also be
informed of the failure via electronic mail i f so desired. There is also the possi-
bilityof getting the system to execute a special command after the concluded
transmissionor failed transmission, see also the keyword
EXECUTE_AFTER_SEND.

4.1 faxsend

The easiestway to send a fax using faxsendis quite simply to give a telephone
number anda file name as an argument. For example:
# faxlogon
# faxsend 7586535 pricelist
whichconverts the text in the file “pricelist” to fax format and sends the finished
fax to faxnumber 7586535.
Data canalso be sent to faxsend via a so-called pipe as follows: