Ubuntu Manpage: fax - make, send, receive, view or print a fax

NAME

       fax - make, send, receive, view or print a fax

SYNOPSIS

       fax help

       fax make [-l] file

       fax send [-l] [-v] { -m | number } filename...

       fax [ receive [-v] [ filename-prefix ] ]

       fax { print | view | rm } filename...

       fax { queue | status [t] |  start | stop }

       fax answer

OPTIONS

       -l       use low (96 line per inch) resolution

       -v       display verbose messages for debugging

       -m       the phone call has already been dialed manually

       The commands make, send, receive, view and queue may be abbreviated to their first characters (e.g. ``fax
       q'').

       Assignments  of  the  form  VARIABLE=value  may  appear before the command name to temporarily change the
       values of most fax script variables (e.g. ``fax PAGE=a4 print letter.001'')

DESCRIPTION

fax provides a simple user interface to the efax(1) and efix(1) programs. It allows you to send text or
Postscript files as faxes and receive, print or preview received faxes. The fax help command prints a
summary of the possible commands.

To send a fax, the original files need to be converted from ASCII or Postscript into a particular bit-map
format (TIFF with Group 3 encoding). This can be done automatically by the fax send command or you can
use the fax make command to do the conversion before sending the fax. The conversion will create one
file per page. These files will have the name of the original file with the page number as an additional
suffix. For example, running fax make doc.ps on the two-page postscript file doc.ps would generate the
files doc.ps.001 and doc.ps.002.

When sending a fax with the fax send command you may dial the number manually and use the -m option or
you may give the phone number on the command line. The names of the files to be sent are given on the
command line, usually by using wildcards. For example, to send a multi-page fax consisting of the files
doc.ps.001, doc.ps.002, and so on, you could use the command fax send 555-1212 doc.ps.0* (if you had
already run the fax make command) or simply fax send 555-1212 doc.ps. If the number is busy the script
will wait and try again.

Use the fax receive command to answer the phone and receive a fax. If a file name is specified the
received fax will be stored in files with the given file name plus an extension equal to the page number.
If no options are given, the received fax will be stored in files having a name given by the date and
time and an extension equal to the page number. For example, a fax received beginning on July 4 at
3:05:20 pm will generate files 0704150520.001, 0704150520.002, and so on.

The fax print, fax view, and fax rm commands are used to print, preview or remove received fax files. As
with the send command the file names are usually given using wildcards.

If efax has been installed for automatic fax reception you can use the fax queue command to check for
files in the incoming spool directory. The fax script can also be configured to print received faxes or
e-mail them as MIME attachments with type image/tiff-f. For convenience the fax print, view and rm
commands will first check for the named files in this spool directory. The fax status command shows the
status of the automatic receive process once, or every t seconds. Privileged users can use the fax stop
and fax start commands to stop and restart the fax reception daemon.

The fax answer command is used for unattended reception of faxes. It is normally placed in the
inittab(5) or ttytab(5) file and is run automatically by init(8).

The -v option displays verbose messages.

Other features of the fax script are documented within the script:

- a directory that lets you specify recipients by name instead of number

- the fax new command to create a simple cover page and start up a text editor

- the fax makefont command converts a Postscript font to a bit-mapped font for use in headers or text

RESOLUTION

       Faxes  can  be  created at low (98 lines per inch) or high (196 lpi) resolution.  Almost all fax machines
       will operate at either resolution.  By default files are created at high resolution but you can  use  the
       optional -l argument to create files at low resolution.

SESSION LOGS

       The modem commands and responses together with status and error messages are written to file.  If the fax
       is successfully sent or received the log file is removed.  Otherwise a message is printed showing the log
       file name.  Please send a copy of this file when reporting problems with efax.

FILES

       The  fax  script will `source' the optional shell scripts /etc/efax.rc, ~/.efaxrc and/or ./.efaxrc before
       processing command-line arguments.  These files can be used to set script variables to custom values  for
       a particular system, user and/or directory.

       The  following  files  are  created in the FAXDIR spool directory when automatic fax reception is enabled
       (see the fax script).  DEV represents the name of the fax modem  device  file  in  /dev  (e.g.  cua1  for
       /dev/cua1).

       DEV.n     the log file created by the fax answer daemon with process id n

       DEV.log   contains  collected  log  files  for  device  DEV.  Log files showing a termination status of 1
                 (device busy) or 4 (no response from modem) are not added to this file.

       DEV.stop  created by the fax stop command to prevent the fax daemon from starting up.

AUTHOR

       Fax was written by Ed Casas.  Please send comments or bug reports to edc@cce.com.   Please  describe  the
       type of modem used and include a copy of the log file.

COPYRIGHT

       Fax  is  copyright  1993 -- 1999 by Ed Casas.  It may be used, copied and modified under the terms of the
       GNU Public License.

DISCLAIMER

       Although fax has been tested, it may have errors that will prevent it  from  working  correctly  on  your
       system.   Some  of  these  errors  may cause serious problems including loss of data and interruptions to
       telephone service.

BUGS

       See efax(1).

3rd Berkeley Distribution                           May 1996                                              FAX(1)