Peanuts NeXT Software Archives/Peanuts-3.iso/Tools/fax/fax.README

Text File | 1994-02-11 | 2.4 KB | 63 lines

This package contains two programs, "fax" (a shell script) and
"rtf2ps" (an Objective-C program.)

About "fax"
----------
"fax" is a shell script that will let you fax files from the
command line.  It works by converting the file to PostScript,
inserting some special PostScript comments into the file
(destination phone number and so on) and submitting the
document to "lpr" to be faxed.

This script will also fill in the NeXT fax cover
sheet of your choice if you wish.

You can use this filter to fax plain text files (which will be
run through "enscript" to convert them to postscript),
postscript files, or rich text files.   rtf or rtfd files can
be converted to postscript via the "rtf2ps" program included
in this distribution.

With the right email addresses, you could even set up an email
alias that could receive NeXTmail and fax it out to a specified
phone number!  (Left as an exercise to the reader, although I
may get around to writing this script some day.)

About "rtf2ps"
-------------

rtf2ps is a commandline program that will convert rtf or rtfd files to
postscript.  It does this by creating a Text object on the fly and
loading the rtf or rtfd into that object, and then asking the object
to print itself.  Various tricks are used to get the postscript code
to go to standard output rather than the printer, and to allow this
program to work at all, without a UI, even if nobody is logged in.

We are all be indebted to Eric P. Scott who made this idea work
via some amazing trickery.  I merely took his code and fiddled with
it to handle both .rtf and .rtfd files, and to output postscript
on standard output.  It really is remarkably clever in the way
it fakes out NXApp into not caring that the Text object isn't
actually in a Window.

You can use this program together with the fax script to
fax rtf files from the command line.  For instance,

    rtf2ps MyRtfFile.rtf | fax -p 5551212


I have been told that rtf2ps doesn't handle RTFD files containing
embedded TIFF images properly, but that it does handle RTFD
containing embedded PostScript.  I haven't had a chance to
look at that yet.


Both of these programs are completely free; please use them
as you wish.  If you like them, drop me and/or Eric ([e-mail])
a note and let us know.  Please pass any bug reports or suggestions
for improvement along to me.

Steve Hayman
February 10, 1994
[e-mail]