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From: wnn@ornl.gov
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Macintosh FAX on a network
Message-ID: <1991Feb19.224117.14776@cs.utk.edu>
Date: 19 Feb 91 22:41:17 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.015202.2758@ohsu.edu>
Sender: usenet@cs.utk.edu (USENET News Poster)
Organization: University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Labora
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In article <1991Feb19.015202.2758@ohsu.edu> bj@ohsu470.ohsu.edu (Bill Jackson)
writes:
>Forgive me if this is an old or well known subject:
>I have a growing network of machines including many Macintoshes, and have been
>asked to provide centralised FAX services to these machines.

We use an Orchid MacFax with FaxGate software from Solutions, QuickMail from CE
Software, and for conveninece, QM Concierge from Information Electronics, and
Adobe Type Manager on the server to improve the resulta of rasterizing
PostScript fonts on outgoing messages.

It generally works very well, except that the MacFax modem is not compatible
with a couple of older fax machine models from Ricoh, and perhaps some other
manufacturers? However I expect to get a replacement modem that should fix that
problem in the next few days.

Sending documents from QuickMail is very easy and the recipients are always
astonished about the quality they get for graphics and type (unless someone
uses a font for which we don't have the ATM outline or a copy three times its
size of the bitmap font installed on the server).

Receiving is more of a problem, because the computer can't read the cover page
and automatically direct the incoming document to the recipient. The Custodian
of the FaxGate Mail Center receives the message and needs to screen it to
determine to whom to forward it. We use QM Concierge to allow us to easily
change who actually does the screening, by sending a forwarding request to
Concierge rather than having to log into the Mail Center as the administrator
and setting someone else to be Custodian every time the person who usually does
the job is out of the office.

Incoming faxes create huge files. A 10 to 12 page fax easily translates into a
2 MB file. Thus you need to have a lot of disk space on the server and need to
make sure that recipients promptly retrieve and delete their faxes from the
mail center. The Viewer applicationa and the MailViewer DA, which come with
FaxGate, and even SuperViewerDA which I already had purchased separately, only
display the fax at 72 dpi. That may be insufficient to read small type. Neither
viewer lets you zoom in for more detail. You can copy and paste a page at a
time into Canvas or some other graphics package that lets you read at two or
three times magnification to display all the detail contained in the document,
but if you have a ten-page document, that's tedious.

Printing on an old LaserWriter Plus can take as much as 20 minutes per page
because you are actually printing a 216 dpi bitmap. And even newer LaserWriter
models are not very much faster at that. Perhaps the forthcoming 68030-based
models will help.

Wolfgang N. Naegeli
University of Tennessee & Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Internet: wnn@ornl.gov    Bitnet: wnn@ornlstc
Phone: 615-574-6143       Fax: 615-574-6141 (MacFax)
QuickMail (QM-QM): Wolfgang Naegeli @ 615-574-4510