z28 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Howdy Monks,
I'm beginning to suspect that Send::Fax might be in the same boat as Brush::Teeth and Paint::House. Obviously, its hard to send a fax over a broadband connection when they are sent over telephone lines.
I would like to add fax send/receive capability to a perl app of mine. I've looked around perlmonks, freshmeat, and google in general for a summary of how faxing stuff relates to and is supported by perl and linux. While I've gotten a lot of "here's how to build a fax server with linux" or "sending faxes with winfax" no one will tell me exactly how this works and how I can use perl to get it done. Anyone know?
Lastly, if anyone HAS managed to get Paint::House going, please drop me a line. :)
Thanks as always,
z28

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Faxing with Perl
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Dec 23, 2002 at 06:22 UTC
    There is no way around it, you need a phone.

    Now it needn't be your phone, but you need to be able to send a fax somehow (doesn't really matter how, whatever you can do, details needn't be perl specific).

    Then, you simply create an interface to said faxing method (whether it be through OLE automation, use of Expect.pm with some app, or what have you).

    It's easy (if you can send a fax somehow, then you can use perl to do it as well)

    You may need one of the Modem modules from CPAN.

    Now yahoo has a send-a-fax feature, and you can simply exploit it to fax/enable your application (yahoo account required, usuall caveats). Take a look at Mail::Webmail::Yahoo for an example of that type app.

    Sorry to sound so vague/general, but dem's da breaks ;(

    MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!
    ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

[reply]
Re: Faxing with Perl
by cLive ;-) (Prior) on Dec 23, 2002 at 08:41 UTC
    I suggest you look up hylafax

    cLive ;-)

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Re: Faxing with Perl
by zentara (Cardinal) on Dec 23, 2002 at 16:42 UTC
    Have you done a google search for "fax over internet". There are a number of sites and programs to send and receive faxes like email. Maybe if you found the right combo, you could do the form submissions with LWP. I thought about it awhile back, but figured email was easier anyhow.
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      A service like Protus Fax will do what you want, and you don't need a phone line.

      All they do is issue with a number for receiving faxes (which just arrive at the designated e-mail account), and a password which you put at the top of any messages you wish to fax. As it supports MIME attachments, you could easily automate sending with MIME::Lite or similar.

      I can't help you with receiving faxes, beyond saying that Protus sends them back as TIFF. We have ways of making TIFFs more friendly ...

      --
      $,="\n";foreach(split('',"\3\3\3c>\0>c\177cc\0~c~``\0cc\177cc")) {$a++;$_=unpack('B8',$_);tr,01,\40#,;$b[$a%6].=$_};print@b,"\n"

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Re: Faxing with Perl
by meetraz (Hermit) on Dec 23, 2002 at 21:47 UTC
    I've always used EFax for this kind of thing, and it works great!
[reply]
      The InterFAX internet fax service lets you connect from Perl via SOAP::Lite. There are samples of how to fax from Perl on the site. The developer program lets you register and fax for free until you go live.
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