From: B.J. Guillot To: All Thread: BGFAX 1.70 Rev M released (1/1) Date: 01-Aug-97, 2:12pm (Ref# 5579) Grab the beta from my home page, http://www.blkbox.com/~bgfax/ By FidoNet FREQ of magic name "BGBETA" from 1:106/400, Or by good-old-fashioned BBS download from +1 713 507 9620 1.70 Revision M Friday 1 August 1997 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hopefully, we will have only one more beta, and then the full release, since BGFAX 1.70 was released on March 1, and that is five months ago. 1. New POLYFAX switch #SW:hhmm-hhmm ("Send Window") Many people have asked for the ability to have POLYFAX run only during certain hours, or for certain telephone numbers to be called only at certain times. This is now possible with the #SW switch. For example, POLYFAX /QUEUE #SW:2300-0700 The above would cause POLYFAX to send all faxes (that don't have their own #SW overrides) between the hours of 11pm and 7 am. Like most other POLYFAX "#" switches, the defaults can be overridden during database initiaization (for POLYFAX /SEND) or on the first line of ASCII files that are thrown into the POLYFAX.NEW directory (for POLYFAX /QUEUE). 2. A FAX-to-GIF conversion module has been added into VIEW. This option was added because of paid custom programming (as you probably know by now, the BBS industry is hurting badly, and sales of BGFAX have been low, so I've been doing some custom programming here and there to help pay the bills). Because of patent issues involved with the LZW compression technique used in GIF files, this GIF module will most likely be removed from the shareware version of BGFAX, and be provided only to the customer that has paid for the change. (Unisys must be paid a 1.5% royalty fee for the use of LZW compression.) For the beta test, the GIF module will be available for testing purposes. The conversion seems to take a very long time (9 minutes for a 2 page fax on a 486/133), and I am working on improving the speed. A "VIEWGIF.DAT" file will also be produced during the conversion. After the conversion finishes, you can write an external program to parse this file to determine what kind of tags you need to put in your HTML files for the GIF height and width. Example: Description: FX74.FAX original filename Remote ID [713 507 9620 ] document id (tiff-f conversions only) 1997:07:17 17:16:39 document time (tiff-f conversions only) Reserved1 future Reserved2 future Reserved3 future Reserved4 future Reserved5 future 2 number of pages in the fax FX74.G01 filename of GIF page #1 1728 width 1078 height (number of scanlines) ReservedA future FX74.G02 filename of GIF page #2 1728 width 1082 height (number of scanlines) ReservedA future 3. Another custom-paid programming additon to VIEW. /IL:xxxxx switch. This switch allows you to print a string of text at the top of the pages of a fax when printed on a PCL (laser) printer. /IL stands for "Identify Left" (under the assumption that one day, there might be a /IR switch). If you must use spaces in the string, replace the spaces with underscores. e.g., VIEW /P42 /IL:This_is_printed_at_the_top_of_the_page 4. When printing black-and-white PCX files with VIEW.EXE, if the width of the file was not 1728 pixels, VIEW would put all kind of trailing garbage after the short scan lines. This has been fixed. 5. During a database build for a POLYFAX broadcast, the number of pages in the fax will be shown on the screen. This lets you make sure you init'ed the database with the right fax before committing to a POLYFAX /SEND. 6. Changed BGFAX2 so that it switches the port to hardware flow control whenever BGFAX2 terminates, rather than leaving software flow control active. Previously, BGFAX2 would only turn on hardware flow control when the /SB (spawn-BBS) switch was used. 7. Added debug switch /DM for use with BGFAX32. If a Win32 communication error occurs during BGFAX32's attempt to open port, the /DM switch will cause BGFAX32 to stay on screen until Ctrl-Break is pressed or the window is manually closed. Also, someone reported a bug in which BGFAX /HOST:nn (where "nn" is an idle timeout in minutes) did not appear to be functioning if BGFAX was started right at midnight. I tried playing with this, but was not able to duplicate the bug. BGFAX seemed to always exit right at midnight if the /HOST:nn switch was used, regardless of the "nn" value, so perhaps this is some kind of bug fix I did a long time ago and have forgot about. There has been some confusion as to how the BGFAX /NM and /VM switches are to be used. Here is a clarification to BGFAX.DOC: With Class 1, BGFAX will normally use numeric mode (ATEQV) when sending faxes, and verbose mode when receiving faxes. The different modes are used as a work-around to various bugs in US Robotics Sporsters and I-Modems. However, on some other modems, this logic causes problems, so two switches are provided to modify the default behavior by BGFAX. /NM --> Causes BGFAX Class 1 receive mode to use numeric mode /VM --> Causes BGFAX Class 1 send mode to use verbose mode Regards, bgfax author B.J. Guillot