RECVQ(5)

💖 RECVQ(5) 💖

okay bestie, so this one lives in the File Formats Manual section of your man pages, and it's all about recvq/fax* — the received facsimile document format. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

recvq/fax* — received facsimile document format. that's it, that's the vibe 🎀

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So when HylaFAX receives a facsimile, it drops it into the recvq subdirectory. every single facsimile document is stored as one single Class F Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) file. no cap. and this format is carrying a lot of info, like it's giving very organized:

• page width and length
• horizontal and vertical resolution
• page orientation
• phone number of the sender
• date and time document was received
• number of scanlines received with errors
• maximum number of consecutive scanlines received with errors
• whether or not bad scanlines were regenerated by the receiver
• make and model of the modem used to receive the document
• name of the host computer on which the document was received

the image data itself gets written using either CCITT T.4 or CCITT T.6 compression. by default, the data is written using the compression scheme/data format that the sender and receiver negotiated together — teamwork makes the dream work 🫶. BUT, plot twist: if faxgetty(8) is configured to do copy quality checking, then the data is written using the compression scheme defined by the RecvDataFormat configuration parameter. see hylafax-config(5) for the tea 💅

and real talk about scanlines: a scanline that gets regenerated by the receiver because of an error is typically just a copy of the previous good scanline. like, it said "let me just reuse this one, it ate" 😭

about permissions — the files in the recvq directory are created with the protection mode specified in the server configuration file(s). by default, files are created with mode 0600 and owned by the fax user, which means they're accessible only to the fax user. private. exclusive. main character energy 👑

and if you wanna print a facsimile on a POSTSCRIPT® printer, you can use the fax2ps(1) program. iconic ✨

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

viewfax(1), faxview(1), fax2ps(1), faxgetty(8), libtiff(3), hylafax-config(5)

k bye ily, this page was living in the File Formats Manual, dated October 3, 1995, under the name RECVQ(5). periodt 💜