FAXCOVER(1)FAXCOVER(1)NAMEfaxcover - generate a POSTSCRIPT cover page for an outgo
ing facsimile
SYNOPSISfaxcover [ options ] -f from-name -n fax-number
DESCRIPTIONfaxcover 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 informa
tion supplied on the command line and a cover sheet tem_
plate file.
faxcover is normally invoked by the sendfax(1) program to
generate a cover page for each outgoing facsmile.
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
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 char
acters, 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 Break_
IntoLines (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 Com_
mentX
faxcover also emits a POSTSCRIPT procedure for breaking
comment strings into multiple lines using the POSTSCRIPT
font metric information. This procedure is named BreakIn_
toLines and has the following usage convention:
%<line-width> <line-height> <x> <y> <string> BreakInto
Lines -
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 ini
tialized 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 opera
tor 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 tem
plate 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 gen
erating 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.
-n number Use number for the destination fax machine
number.
-N number Use number for the sender's fax machine num
ber.
-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 abbrevi
ation of an entry in the pagesizes(${MAN
NUM4_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 (Ameri
can Legal), us-led (American Ledger), us-exe
(American Executive), jp-let (Japanese Let
ter), and jp-leg (Japanese Legal). Compar
isons are case-insensitive and any match of a
substring of the full page-size name is suffi
cient; e.g. ``legal'' would match ``American
Legal''.
Note that it may not be permissible to image
into the full page area; the guaranteed repro
ducible 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 sup
ported by the Group 3 facsimile protocol.
Thus if an odd-size facsimile is submitted for
transmission it may not be possible to deter
mine if it can be sent until the fax server
establishes communication with the remote fac
simile machine.
-t name Use name for the receiver's identity.
-v number Use number for the receiver's voice phone num
ber.
-V number Use number for the sender's voice phone num
ber.
-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
${LIBDATA}/hyla.conf system-wide configuration file
${LIBDATA}/faxcover.ps default cover page template
${LIBDATA}/pagesizes page size database
BUGSfaxcover should be able to determine the appropriate
length of commentsX strings by using font metric informa
tion.
SEE ALSOhylafax-client(1), sendfax(1)
January 06, 2001 FAXCOVER(1)
