If you want to send the fax via e-mail to a remote fax server, you should
use the function tex-send-fax-mail (C-c C-m). Apart from the different
function name, the handling is the same as for tex-send-fax above. The
way the fax takes is:
faxmail as if it would call
faxspool locally)
faxmail (produces a MIME message with one attachment per
appendix)
faxspool)
faxspool
That is, each file is encoded if appropriate and concatenated together with
a smart e-mail header. Each fax appendix is represented by a MIME
attachment. You could view everything with a MIME-compatible mailer. Or
send a fax directly from Netscape or Z-Mail to the fax server. Have a look
at faxmail if you like. It's straightforward. Since I leave the
handling and conversion of files to faxspool (why re-invent the
wheel?), it's simple too. The bad news is that the file formats you can
send are restricted to those which are recognized by faxspool.
You have to set up a "fax" e-mail alias (or whatever you like to name it) in
your /etc/aliases, just like,
fax: |/usr/local/etc/mgetty+sendfax/mail2fax.pl
Plus, you must maintain the file fax.allow (as you have to with
faxspool). Simply put anyone's e-mail address into the file who should
be able to fax. fax.allow must be world readable because
mail2fax.pl will run as "nobody". "nobody" must certainly be in
fax.allow, too.
In mail2fax.pl, you should adjust all the directories and paths in the
first section to reflect your actual setup. Please note that
mail2fax.pl needs Perl 5 and mmencode from the
metamail
package.
faxmail, its counterpart, needs metamail as well. Be sure to adjust
the MAILER shell variable at the beginning of the script. faxmail
must be installed on the fax "client" machines! It's best to install the
entire package on each machine. Only mail2fax.pl needs Perl, so there
doesn't need Perl to be installed on the clients.
There's one quirk with faxspool. The script nowhere defines a
PATH variable and thus relies on what it's being given from the
calling process. sendmail, however, restricts the PATH given to
child processes to /bin:/usr/bin for security reasons. This is not
enough. In mail2fax.pl, you should define the variable $path to
include all necessary directories for the tools called by faxspool
(usually /usr/local/bin for the PBMtools and Ghostscript and /usr/TeX/bin
for dvips). If you don't do this, faxspool will not be able to
process the files given on the command line.
If you are unsure which PATH to set, send yourself a MIME message with
attachments. Save it to a file. Then,
su - nobody
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin /usr/local/etc/mgetty+sendfax/mail2fax.pl < <file>
and watch what happens. If faxspool can process everything fine (check
with faxq when it's done), you're on the safe side. Otherwise watch
why and where faxspool fails (a set -x near the beginning helps!)
and add the respective directory to the $path string in
mail2fax.pl. Easy, isn't it? OK, it could be smarter.
You have three options for sending faxes via e-mail:
tsfax, without faxmailIf you don't use tsfax nor faxmail to send MIME faxes to the fax
server, be sure to include the following lines in exactly this sequence in
your e-mail:
Fax-Res: $RES
Fax-Dest: $DEST
Fax-No: $PHONE
Replace $RES by -n if you want normal resolution, else
leave it empty. $DEST is the name of the recipient,
$PHONE his fax number.
Sending MIME attached appendices works fine from Netscape. Don't forget
to convert HTML pages to Postscript before sending them -- faxspool has
no HTML converter. And yes, you can also read such MIME mails with
Netscape... So you can CC them to yourself or someone else.
Your first MIME attachment should be your coverpage. Alternatively, you can add a
Fax-Text:
header after the Fax-No: header. Everything from there to the end of
this part of the MIME message will be used as a coverpage, albeit a simple
one. This is for people who want to use only Netscape or a MIME capable
mailer for faxing. See the file sample.mail as an example.
tsfax, with faxmailfaxmail works just like faxspool and has some of the same command
line options. Example:
/usr/local/etc/mgetty+sendfax/faxmail -a fax@seneca.muc.de \
-D "Lola" 01234567890 lola.dvi ~/tmp/germany.gif
If you use faxmail, you don't need to care for the lines above. Your
first file (lola.dvi in the above example) becomes the coverpage.
tsfaxIf you use tsfax to write and send your faxes, you can handle everything
from Emacs. The file you write becomes your coverpage as usually. In this
case, faxmail cares in the background for the above mentioned lines in
your mail message.
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