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- Date: Sat, 2 Jan 93 06:14:28 GMT
- Sender: PMDF Distribution List <PMDF-L@IRLEARN.BITNET>
- From: Ned Freed <NED@INNOSOFT.COM>
- Subject: RE: MIME support for fax
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pmdf-l
- Lines: 35
-
- I'm not sure whether or not PMDF-FAX meets your requirements for "faxes
- through e-mail"; perhaps I'd best just say what it is that PMDF-FAX does
- do.
-
- PMDF-FAX is a set of channel programs for PMDF that provide facilities for
- converting text, PostScript, and various other formats into Group 3 FAX,
- as well as a set of programs that take these Group 3 FAX files and use
- them to drive a variety of FAX modems. Facilities for receiving FAXes from
- the modems that are capable of FAX receive and conversion of these materials
- into various formats (PostScript, TIFF, GIF, PCL, etc.) are also provided.
- Received FAXes can be printed, delivered to files, or automatically forwarded
- on as mail messages.
-
- None of this really involves "faxes through e-mail", however. PMDF-FAX can
- and has been used to convert mail messages into FAX images which were then
- sent via e-mail to another sort of FAX gateway, but usage of this sort is
- quite rare. Most people want a way to convert mail messages into real
- FAXes and vice versa, and that's what PMDF-FAX is aimed at.
-
- MIME is used throughout to provide type information, multipart facilities,
- and so forth. PMDF-FAX was developed with MIME in mind from the outset.
- Tricky stuff like automatic defragmentation of message/partial objects is
- supported and works quite well (this is actually a feature of PMDF rather
- than being specific to PMDF-FAX). And of course the MIME transfer encodings
- provide an effective means of dealing with binary message bodyparts.
-
- All of this functionality has been available for some time in the form of
- a commercial product -- we released a fully MIME compliant version of
- PMDF and PMDF-FAX right at the time MIME appeared as a proposed standard.
- Of course development is ongoing: a new version of PMDF and PMDF-FAX is
- currently in field test, and it displays the usual feature-creep you'd
- expect (support for more formats, better conversion facilities, improved
- PostScript fonts, support for more modems, etc. etc. etc.).
-
- Ned
-