TIFFCHECK(8)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, welcome to tiffcheck — the little icon from the TIFFCHECK(8) page in your System Manager's Manual 💅 she's the one who checks your TIFF files for HylaFAX conversion requirements. no cap, that's literally her whole job 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/usr/sbin/tiffcheck [ options ] file.tif

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so basically, tiffcheck takes a TIFF as input and writes a multi-line text message to the standard output, telling you all the work that needs to happen to get those images ready for facsimile transmission 📠✨

she's usually not even called by a human — she gets invoked by the tiff2fax(8) script, which the HylaFAX scheduler uses to prep TIFF documents that got submitted for transmission. she's a behind-the-scenes queen fr fr 👑

🦋 the first line of output 🦋

the very first line is a bunch of words separated by + signs, and each one is telling you if the input file should be:

• rejected (REJECT) 💀
• reformatted with a different data-encoding scheme (REFORMAT)
• scaled to different page dimensions (RESIZE)
• reimaged in a different vertical resolution (REVRES)
• reimaged for other reasons, like converting from color to black&white (REIMAGE)

the way that this conversion requirements string ALWAYS has its keywords in that exact order above?? iconic. so like, you'd get RESIZE+REVRES if the input file needs to be scaled and converted to a different resolution. periodt 💅

everything that comes after that first line is descriptive text explaining the reason(s) for the file conversion(s). and bestie, that text is literally suitable to send back to a client — y'know, in case document conversion fails or just isn't attempted 🙈 the descriptive text is ordered identically to the keywords in the conversion string, which is what makes it possible to match up each conversion requirement with its reason. so clean. so organized. we love a structured queen ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

these are the operations she recognizes:

• -1 — set output to be Group 3 1D-encoded.
• -2 — set output to be Group 3 2D-encoded.
• -3 — set output to be Group 4 MMR-encoded.
• -w width — set the output page width, in pixels. by default, pages are 1728 pixels wide.
• -l length — set the output page length in millimeters. by default, pages are 297 millimeters long.
• -r vres — set the vertical resolution, in lines/inch, at which to image the TIFF.

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

kay so this first color image needs to be converted to black&white, resized to the output page dimensions, and reformatted to use Group 3 1D-encoded data:

hyla% /usr/sbin/tiffcheck jello.tif
REFORMAT+RESIZE+REIMAGE
Document is not a bilevel image (bits/sample 8).
Document requires reformatting, not in Group 3 format.
Document requires resizing to adjust page width (convert to 1728, document is 256).

and this next one is a facsimile received at high resolution (196 lpi) — she only needs to be converted to 98 lpi. lowkey the easiest job ever:

hyla% /usr/sbin/tiffcheck faxix.tif
REVRES
Document requires reformatting to adjust vertical resolution (convert to 98, document is 196).

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

tiff2fax(8), faxq(8), hylafax-server(5)

okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and check those TIFFs 🦋✨ this was the TIFFCHECK(8) page from the System Manager's Manual, dated January 18, 1996 — yeah she's a 90s baby and she still ate 💖 mwah, ily, bye 🫶