1.0 Introduction

It all began almost two years ago, when for the first time I needed to send a fax... "Well", I said, "I've got a fax modem, I can send it from home...".

Unfortunately I had no fax software: the ones provided with the modem were just for MS-Dos and Windows, as usual.

So I started looking around for fax programs for my Amiga: there were only two commercial packages, but as I'm almost always out-of-money, I thought it was a good idea to look in the shareware before.

I did, but with no luck: I just saw a couple of programs, one worse than the other.

Thus, I sat down and began to type...

I tried to put in STFax all the functions I thought I would need, like:

    - Nice, handy user interface
    - Phonebook
    - Scheduler
    - Reports
    - ARexx port
    - Datatypes support for image conversion
    - On-line help
    - Printer driver to redirect all print-outs to a fax file

Due to the popularity of the shareware version of STFax, and the increased demand for voice support, I was approached in Summer by Active Software to develop a commercial version to rival some of the commercial fax/voice software found within the Windows market (Supervoice Pro, WinFax Pro etc).

We decided that advanced voice support was a priority due to nearly every modern modem being shipped with voice functionality. Other ideas included a new "mail program" style interface, fax on demand support, remote access, point-and-click BBS creation and, perhaps, video-conferencing and/or Internet phone support.

STFax Professional supports nearly all our ideas. It allows you to create your own home office: people can call your home, be presented with a list of options (press 1 to leave a message, 2 to hear a recorded message or 3 to send a fax), then choose to leave a message for a member of your family or hear a message from a member of your family.

STFax Professional is ideal for the small business. Not only does it support advanced voice scripting, it allows you to remotely access any voice mailbox from an external source, setup a collection of faxes which can be sent to the customer on demand (fax on demand) or why not create a BBS so customers can upload or download files from your computer?

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