g3tolj(1)

💖 g3tolj — the glow-up your fax file has been waiting for 💖

okay bestie, so this one lives in the mgetty+sendfax manual, section 1, and it's genuinely one of my faves. it takes a fax and makes it printable. no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

g3tolj — converts a Group 3 fax file into a printable HP-PCL file 🖨️💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

g3tolj [-kludge] [-reversebits] [-scale N] [-aspect N]
[-resolution 75|100|150|300] [-compress 0|1|2] [-pagelength N]
[-duplength N] [g3file]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so it reads a Group 3 fax file as input — raw or digifax, either one, she's flexible like that. if you don't hand her a filename? no problem, she just pulls from stdin. and what does she give you back? a printable HP-PCL file. that's it. that's the whole vibe. iconic honestly. ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -kludge — tells g3tolj to skip the first lines so it can get its synchronisation together. a little messy-girl moment but it works.
• -reversebits — tells g3tolj to read the bits least-significant first instead of the default most-significant first. apparently some fax modems do it one way and others do it the other way?? truly nobody agreed on anything in the 90s. 😭 so if you're getting a whole bunch of "invalid code" messages, try this flag. iykyk.
• -scale N — scales the output to match your printer resolution and paper size. the default is 1.40 and honestly that's gonna do it in most cases, bestie. she ate.
• -aspect N — scales the output to match printer resolution and paper size. default is 1.0, which does the job for high resolution faxes, and 2.0 is the move for low resolution faxes.
• -resolution 75|100|150|300 — picks the print resolution. default is 300. ✨
• -compress 0|1|2 — picks the compression method for the print output. 0 = none, 1 = rll, 2 = tiff. default is 0.
• -pagelength N — defines the pagelength in inches. default is 10.95. after that length a pagebreak gets generated, and the last part of the previous page gets duplicated onto the next page. 🌀
• -duplength N — defines the length in inches that gets duplicated after a pagebreak. default is 0.7.

📚 REFERENCES 📚

the standard for Group 3 fax is defined in CCITT Recommendation T.4. slay, standards bodies.

💀 BUGS 💀

pls report bugs to chel@vangennip.nl 🫶 (not me, i'm just the messenger)

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

pbmtog3(1), pbm(5), g3cat(1), sendfax(8), mgetty(1) — go read those too, they're all in the family 🦋

👑 AUTHOR 👑

g3tolj is Copyright (C) 1994 by Chel van Gennip, <chel@vangennip.nl>. ✨

the sources of the g3topbm and pbmtolj programs from Jef Poskanzers pbmplus package got used here, but a lot of the code has been changed or added to simplify its use for printing faxes. and the value added? low use of memory, fast scaling, printing of long faxes with page breaks, and print file compression — that last one by John Watson. obsessed with the efficiency tbh. 💅

so yeah — Chel wrote this one, and it's dated 22 may 94, and in the mgetty+sendfax manual it's filed as g3tolj(1). bestie behaviour from 1994, no notes. 💖🌈⭐