faxcover (1)

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NAME

faxcover - generate a POSTSCRIPT cover page for an outgoing facsimile

SYNOPSIS

faxcover [ options ] -f from-name -n fax-number

DESCRIPTION

faxcover generates a POSTSCRIPT® cover page document on the standard output. The cover page fills the entire area of a default page and is created according to the information supplied on the command line and a cover sheet template file.

faxcover is normally invoked by the sendfax(1) program to generate a cover page for each outgoing facsimile.

faxcover works by creating a POSTSCRIPT dictionary that contains definitions for the variable information that is to be placed on the facsimile cover page. Specifically, a dictionary with the following symbols are defined:

Symbol              Description                        Symbol               Description
to                  destination person                 from                 sending person
to-company          destination company                from-company         sender's company
to-location         destination geographic location    from-location        sender geographic location
to-voice-number     person's voice phone number        from-voice-number    sender's voice phone number
to-fax-number       destination fax phone number       from-fax-number      sender's fax phone number
                                                       from-mail-address    sender's e-mail address
comments            unbroken comment string            commentsX            X'th line of comments
regarding           Re: subject                        CommentX             similar to commentsX
pageWidth           page width in millimeters          page-count           # pages other than cover page
pageLength          page length in millimeters         todays-date          current date and time

If the comments string is longer than maxlencomments characters, it is broken, on word boundaries or instances of ``\n'', into multiple POSTSCRIPT strings commentsX where X is the line number; e.g. comments2 for the second line of comments. Long substrings without whitespace which exceed maxlencomments are also broken. By default faxcover will generate 20 commentsX strings, emitting null string values for empty lines. This number can be changed with the -m option; see below. maxlencomments is changed with the -z option; see below.

Note that use of commentsX with non-fixed-width fonts can lead to spatial problems where characters run off the edge of the generated cover page. In such cases, use of BreakIntoLines (see below) may be a more suitable approach.

CommentX is similar to commentsX except that its values are created only by breaking comments on instances of ``\n'' and not otherwise. maxlines does not affect CommentX

faxcover also emits a POSTSCRIPT procedure for breaking comment strings into multiple lines using the POSTSCRIPT font metric information. This procedure is named BreakIntoLines and has the following usage convention:

%<line-width> <line-height> <x> <y> <string> BreakIntoLines -

eg

/rule (_____________________________________________) def
/lw rule stringwidth pop def /lh 30 def
/y 191.4 def /x 0 def
y -30 0 { x exch moveto rule show } for
lw lh x y comments BreakIntoLines

where the width of the rule controls the length of each line of comments (note that it is made slightly shorter here for the purpose of presentation), x and y are initialized to coordinate locations on the page where the comment string should be imaged, and the number 30 is the inter-line spacing appropriate for the font used to image the comment lines.

If information is unavailable for an item, the associated POSTSCRIPT symbol is defined to be a null string.

Following the definition prologue, a cover sheet template file is copied. This file is expected to be a POSTSCRIPT program that uses the generated strings to create a cover page. The template must include a showpage operator to cause the page to be imaged. The above symbols will be defined in the current dictionary. A trailing end operator is supplied by faxcover, so any manipulation of the dictionary stack should leave the current dictionary on the top of the stack on completion.

OPTIONS

-c comments

Use comments for the comment string. You may use '\n' to break it into several lines on generated the cover page.

-C file

Use file as the template file. The default template file is named faxcover.ps. The template file can also be specified by setting the FAXCOVER environment variable. If the template filename is not an absolute pathname, then faxcover looks first for this file in the home directory of the sender. If no such file is present, then it looks in the library directory where the HylaFAX client application data are installed. If no template file is located, faxcover will terminate without generating a cover page.

-D format

Use format as the formatting specification passed to strftime(3) when generating the time and date placed on the cover page.

-f name

Use name for the sender's identity.

-l location

Use location for the geographic location of the destination company.

-L location

Use location for the geographic location of the sender's company.

-m maxlines

indicates the maximum number of commentsX lines to generate.

-M address

Use address for the sender's e-mail address.

-n number

Use number for the destination fax machine number.

-N number

Use number for the sender's fax machine number.

-p count

Use count for the count of pages to follow the cover page.

-r regarding

Use regarding for the ``Re:'' field.

-s size

Set the page size to use for the transmitted facsimile. Facsimile are normally imaged with a system-default page size (usually letter-size pages, 8.5" by 11", for sites in North America). Alternate page sizes are specified symbolically using either the name or abbreviation of an entry in the pagesizes(5) database; e.g. a3 (ISO A3), a4 (ISO A4), a5 (ISO A5), a6 (ISO A6), b4 (ISO B4), na-let (North American Letter), us-leg (American Legal), us-led (American Ledger), us-exe (American Executive), jp-let (Japanese Letter), and jp-leg (Japanese Legal). Comparisons are case-insensitive and any match of a substring of the full page-size name is sufficient; e.g. ``legal'' would match ``American Legal''.

Note that it may not be permissible to image into the full page area; the guaranteed reproducible area for a page is typically inset. Also, note that while arbitrary page sizes can be specified through the page size database, only a limited set of page dimensions are supported by the Group 3 facsimile protocol. Thus if an odd-size facsimile is submitted for transmission it may not be possible to determine if it can be sent until the fax server establishes communication with the remote facsimile machine.

-t name

Use name for the receiver's identity.

-v number

Use number for the receiver's voice phone number.

-V number

Use number for the sender's voice phone number.

-x company

Use company for the destination company name.

-X company

Use company for the sender's company name.

-z maxlencomments

indicates the maximum length in number of characters allowed in a commentsX string.

DIAGNOSTICS

Complaints about not being able to locate a template file.

FILES

~/.faxdb                    personal fax number database

~/.hylarc                  per-user configuration file

/etc/hylafax/hyla.conf     system-wide configuration file

/etc/hylafax/faxcover.ps   default cover page template

/etc/hylafax/pagesizes     page size database

BUGS

faxcover should be able to determine the appropriate length of commentsX strings by using font metric information.

SEE ALSO

hylafax-client(1), sendfax(1) edit-faxcover(1)

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