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Rethinking my fax solution

I de­cid­ed to re­do most of it, be­cause I think I fig­ured out a bet­ter way.

  1. Use efax in­­stead of mget­­ty+send­­fax

Af­ter al­l, efax works with my mo­dem and send­fax does­n't ;-)

  1. Write a gen­er­ic spool­ing thin­ga­­ma­jig for efax (this is easy)

  2. Re­write print­­­fax.­­pl in a sim­­pler way (done)

  3. Sim­­pli­­fy the win­­dows side.

For­get about a Qt ap­p. All that's need­ed is a prog­gie that lis­tens on a port, ac­cepts con­nec­tion­s. The con­nec­tion gives it a URL. It launch­es the de­fault brows­er with that URL.

If any­one read­ing this can write that pro­gram, I would re­al­ly like it. Use VB, use .NET, use Java, I don't care.

  1. Use the web app as the on­­ly in­­ter­­face.

What's miss­ing yet:

  • Writ­ing the queu­ing pro­­gram (should use same for­­mat as mget­­ty+send­­fax's)

  • The win­­dows "clien­t"

  • Mi­nor tweaks to the web app ( ba­si­­cal­­ly a form for the send­ing data)

And that's it.

Oth­er than the win­dows thing, it's about a day's work.

André Somers / 2006-05-03 17:37:

Writing such a windows application is quite simple, especially with Qt4 :-) I think it would take just an hour or so.

Roberto Alsina / 2006-05-03 17:49:

Well, then. After I have the other components done, I will post a cry for help :-)

Marcos Dione / 2006-05-03 22:33:

the app you want for windows should be a http server? I didn't understood exactly what you want there...

Roberto Alsina / 2006-05-03 23:19:

The windows app sits on the taskbar (or however it's called), and waits for connections on port 5555 (for example).

After you send the print job, the print server will connect to your windows box at that port.

The windows app accepts the connection and reads a URL, sent by the print server, which is the URL to modify the job you just sent.

Then, the windows app opens said URL, allowing the windows user to set the number to be dialed and whatever options are necessary.

Matt / 2006-05-05 05:44:

This is easily done in .NET and could be compiled to use the same executable for a windows AND linux(mono) (although in linux i dont know how to add a tray icon)

I have oodles of spare time on my hands if anything is needed


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