From: B.J. Guillot To: All Thread: BGFAX 1.70 Revision R (1/1) Date: 19-Oct-97, 1:22pm (Ref# 5780) This beta version can be obtained from my web site, http://www.blkbox.com/~bgfax/ or, by FidoNet FREQ of magic name "BGFAX" from 1:106/400 or, by good-old-fashioned BBS download from +1 713 507 9620 1.70 Revision R Sun 19 October 1997 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It's been more than two months since the last beta, and that is very unusual. The reason for the delay was that I have been busy with school and have not had much time to work with BGFAX lately, but I finally had some free time, and was able to put together this beta. This beta release contains a few new features, a few fixes, as well as some new builds (POLYFAX for both OS/2 and Win32, and MAKEFAX for Win32). Most of the POLYFAX enhancements have already been alpha tested by a small group of people last month. Another reason for the delay in getting this beta out is the almost total lack of registrations. It is the third week of October, and I have received perhaps a total of _two_ registrations this month. If the registrations drop off completely, I'll have no incentive to continue to update the product. That would be a real shame, since I believe this is a very useful piece of software. 1. Added /AS:n option to VIEW. This is something that people have been asking about for quite some time. Recall that by pressing Alt-S when viewing a fax, you can cycle between the various shrink modes. Many users have wanted VIEW to start up with a default shrink mode so that they do not have to continue to hit Alt-S several times to get the proper shrink mode selected. /AS:n allows you to select how many times you want VIEW to "virtually" press Alt-S for you. i.e., if you start up VIEW and normally have to hit Alt-S three times to select your best view, then simply start VIEW up as "VIEW /AS:3". That way, once you tuck that into a nice batch file, you will never have to cycle through the Alt-S's again. 2. Two changes to the DOBBS*.BAT file that is created by BGFAX /HOST when an incoming data call is connected. A sixth parameter is added, which represents the PID# (from the /PID:nn command line switch or pi=nn option from the BGFAX.CNF file). The PID# is usually used in a multinode environment. If a PID# is not selected, a "N/A" will be placed in the DOBBS*.BAT file as the 6th parameter instead of the PID#. The other change involves the second parameter, the port. If a sysop was instructing BGFAX to use the FOSSIL driver (F1), BGFAX was actually sticking the "F1" in the DOBBS.BAT file instead of just the "1". This bug is now corrected. 3. Added /SE switch for BGFAX32. This switch will make BGFAX32 spawn the EXEPRINT.BAT file (or BGFAX2 spawn the EXEPRINT.CMD file) whenever a fax is received. With Win32, you might have Beemail32 or PX32 spawn BGFAX32, and when BGFAX32 exits, you go straight back to your mailer, without ever having the option to print the fax automatically. With the /SE switch, BGFAX32 will spawn EXEPRINT.BAT before returning to your Win32 mailer, thus giving you the option to print out your fax on the fly. This switch is not valid for the DOS version. 4. Fixed bug in superfine resolution when receiving. BGFAX would incorrectly determine the resolution setting from some fax machines and mark the fax header with a low resolution flag rather than a superfine resolution flag. 5. Fixed some minor bugs in the FAX-to-GIF conversion algorithm that caused CSHOW and other GIF viewer programs/browsers to view the fax, for the most part, correctly, but reported a broken image at the end. 6. Added VIEW /TS:nnnn parameter for adjusting the Table Size for the GIF conversions. /TS:nnnn can range from /TS:63 to /TS:4095. The default is 4095. The higher the number, the better the compression. Smaller numbers indicate not-as-good compression, but yield a (slightly) faster conversion time. In my opinion, the slight faster conversion time is not worth making the compression worse. Recall that GIF files are lossless, so the files will look EXACTLY the same (not ALMOST the same, but EXACTLY the same), but will still end up having different file sizes due to the nature of the LZW compression table size. This switch is intended as primarily a debugging option for me, so you should never have to use it. 7. Fixed a bug that caused BGFAX to store the temporary filename of the converted fax file (MKTMP.FX$) into the FAXOUT.LOG rather than the actual ASCII filename. 8. I've included the first build of MAKEFAX-Win32, called MAKEFX32.EXE. Since we need full 32-bit apps to keep Win95 multitasking working at peak perfomance, I finally had the incentive to do the port. Luckily it only took about one-and-a-half hours. 9. Included POLY32.EXE, the Win32 version of POLYFAX. POLY32 will use BGFAX32.EXE and the new MAKEFX32.EXE. 10 I have finally compiled an OS/2 version of POLYFAX. POLYFAX2.EXE is now included in this release. There has not been much demand for an OS/2 POLYFAX, but it only took an hour or two of work to port the DOS version over, so it's available if anyone needs it. POLYFAX2.EXE will use BGFAX2.EXE and MAKEFAX2.EXE. 11 New #ND switch for POLYFAX /SEND and /QUEUE modes. This switch prevents POLYFAX from dialing (actually, prevents BGFAX from dialing). This will be useful in a situation where you are running multiple POLYFAX copies. The #ND station will simply look for new files only, since it seems to work much better in this configuration than having one of the actual dialing stations doing the file queueing job. As such, here is a revision to the example GO.BAT I posted in the 1.70P beta. @echo off start poly32 /queue #nd start poly32 /queue #po:1 start poly32 /queue #po:2 start poly32 /queue #po:3 start poly32 /queue #po:4 Note that ALL polyfax lines require either a #ND or a #PO:nnn switch if you are using more than one POLYFAX. Regards, B.J. Guillot bgfax author