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List:       hylafax
Subject:    Re: Enhanced mail-fax,Quota, and more
From:       "Juan Antonio Martinez Castano" <jantonio () cuco ! dit ! upm ! es>
Date:       1995-03-29 7:58:32
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> 
> What do you mean by "Full mail-based fax service"? What does it do? Thank
> you for any explanations.

	I'll exply: in my site, there are lots of users that only uses UNIX
to read mail. There is also some "complexity" (???) in the invocation of
sendfax (is a joke, but for not professionals UNIX commands are so complex...)

	for instance, if i want to send a simply postcript text, i have to
type: sendfax -R -n -d <dest>@<phone> -h <server> <file>. Too complicated 
for many users. Also implies:
- sendfax, faxstat, faxrm, and so must be accessible from more than 500 sites
- Must configure &update all these sites 
- Must instruct the people about use of fax
- There was no way to set any form of accounting in the original distribution

My boss asked me for a simpler way to use. we decided that mail system was
a perfect way to do. "as simple as mail <dest>@<phone>.fax < <faxfile>"
because every one knows about how to use mail

There was an added problems:
faxmail only supports ascii text. my script supports ascii and postcript, Also
support some iso-latin-1 texts that standard sendfax refuses
i had to implement a mail fax service. this implies that all normal operations
must be performed via mail:

- sending faxes: 	mail <dest>@<phone>.fax
- get fax status:	mail <dest>@<status>.fax
- get acct info		mail <dest>@<info>.fax
- remove jobs		mail <jobid>@<remove>.fax
- get help		mail <dest>@<help>.fax

( <dest> field is only used for informational reports. all the responses are
 also performed by mail )

this way of working is enought simple for most users, and is very easy 
( and cheap ) to mantain and update. Also permitts some improvements like
implementing accounting, and better file type support

this is that i mean when i talk about "full mail-based fax support". I expect
that i've been clear ( perhaps too large :-) ) 


==============================================================================
Juan Antonio Martinez			Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
email: jantonio@dit.upm.es		E.T.S.I Telecomunicacion
Tel:   34-1-5495700 ext 429		Centro de Calculo
Fax:   34-1-3367298			Madrid, Spain
==============================================================================

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