From: wolfgang@netcom.com (Wolfgang Henke)
Subject: Re: Need Fax Software
Organization: Netcom
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 01:40:35 GMT

Larry Little (llittle@tis.llnl.gov) wrote:
: We're looking for an application that allows us to fax from our Suns.
: I've looked through several newsgroups, but so far I haven't found 
: any useful postings.  

: I found on the Sun Catalyst #4 disk two demos:  XpressFax from GNP
: Computers and IsoFax from The Bristol Group.  Does anyone have either
: of these and can comment on their usefulness?  Does anyone have
: anything else that they think is good?


Are you aware of flexfax from Sam Leffler? It now supports a real
fax interface (as opposed to just de facto interfaces). It will work 
with EIA-578 Class 1 fax modems like for example the Digicom Scout+. 
If you would like to try this software with a Scout+, I will make a 
modem available to you free of charge for a reasonable time period 
like maybe a month or so.



Here is the info how to obtain the current version:

$Header: /usr/people/sam/fax/RCS/HOWTO,v 1.6 93/01/24 20:37:59 sam Exp $

How To Obtain This Software (in case all you get is this file)

The source code is available for public ftp on
    sgi.com			sgi/fax/v2.1beta.tar.Z
	(192.48.153.1)

You can also obtain inst'able images for Silicon Graphics machines from
    sgi.com			sgi/fax/v2.1beta.inst.tar
	(192.48.153.1)

For example,
    % ftp -n sgi.com
    ....
    ftp> user anonymous
    ... <type in password>
    ftp> cd sgi/fax
    ftp> binary
    ftp> get v2.1beta.tar.Z

Internal to Silicon Graphics there are inst'able images on the host
flake.asd in the directory /d/dist.  Thus you can do something like:

    % inst -f flake.asd.sgi.com:/d/dist/flexfax

to install the software on your machine.

The external distributions come in a compressed or uncompressed tar
file.  To extract the source distribution:

    % zcat v2.1beta.tar.Z | tar xf -

(uncompress and extract individual files in current directory).  To
unpack and install the client portion of the inst'able distribution:

    % mkdir dist
    % cd dist; tar xf ../v2.1beta.inst.tar; cd ..
    % inst -f dist/flexfax
    ...
    inst> go

(Note, the dist subdirectory is because some versions of inst fail if
the files are in the current directory.) Server binaries is also
included in the inst'able images as flexfax.server.*.  It is not
installed by default, so to get it also you need to extract the do:

    % inst -f flexfax
    ...
    inst> install flexfax.server.*
    inst> go

The SGI binaries were built for Version 4.0.5 of the IRIX operating
system.  They should work w/o problem on earlier versions of the
system, but I have not fully tested this.  Also, note that to install a
server on an SGI machine, you need to have installed the Display
PostScript execution environment product (dps_eoe).  Otherwise, the fax
server will not be able to convert PostScript to facsimile for
transmission.

If you are working from the source distribution, look at the file README
in the top of the source tree.  If you are working from the inst images,
you need to run faxaddmodem to setup and configure your fax modem.  Do
man faxaddmodem for more information.
---------------------end of inclusion--------------------------------

As I understand it to work on a Sun one needs a compiler and ghostscript.




-- 
   _________________________________________________________________________
   Wolfgang Henke     Data lanes not car pool lanes      wolfgang@netcom.com 

Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin