FAXCOVER(1)

💖 FAXCOVER(1) 💖

okay so bestie, this is the faxcover page from the General Commands Manual and honestly? it's giving "art student but make it PostScript" 🎨✨ buckle up, we're making fax cover sheets.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

faxcover — generates a POSTSCRIPT cover page for an outgoing facsimile 💌

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

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

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so faxcover generates a POSTSCRIPT® cover page document straight onto standard output. the cover page fills the entire area of a default page, and it's built from the info you hand it on the command line plus a cover sheet template file. no cap 🫶

faxcover is normally invoked by the sendfax(1) program to generate a cover page for each outgoing facsimile. it's the background bestie doing the work, we love her for that.

here's the actual magic: faxcover works by creating a POSTSCRIPT dictionary that contains definitions for all the variable info that's gonna be placed on the facsimile cover page. specifically, a dictionary with these symbols gets defined:

• 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 gets 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.

heads up bestie ⚠️ 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. it's giving "text said goodbye and left the page" 😭

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. iykyk 💅

if information is unavailable for an item, the associated POSTSCRIPT symbol is defined to be a null string. no info, no drama, just an empty 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. main character energy: the current dictionary stays on top 👑

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🎀 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(5F) 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. so yeah, you might just have to wait and see 🙈

• -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.

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🔥 DIAGNOSTICS 🔥

Complaints about not being able to locate a template file. that's it, that's the whole mood: she yells when she can't find the template 😤

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🌈 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

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💀 BUGS 💀

faxcover should be able to determine the appropriate length of commentsX strings by using font metric information. (she should, bestie. she currently does not. noted. 📝)

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

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

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that's the whole page, no notes 💖 this one was dated January 06, 2001 and it's still out here faxing with main character energy — go make a cover page, bestie, you got this 🎀✨🦋