FAXCOVER(1)

NAME
faxcover - generate a POSTSCRIPT cover page for an outgo-
ing facsimile

SYNOPSIS
faxcover [ options ] -f from-name -n fax-number

DESCRIPTION
faxcover generates a POSTSCRIPT cover page document on the
standard output. The cover page fills the entire area of
a default page and is created according to the information
supplied on the command line and a cover sheet template
file.

faxcover is normally invoked by the sendfax(1) program to
generate a cover page for each outgoing facsmile.

faxcover works by creating a POSTSCRIPT dictionary that
contains definitions for the variable information that is
to be placed on the facsimile cover page. Specifically, a
dictionary with the following symbols are defined:
Symbol Description Symbol Description
to destination person from sending person
to-company destination company from-company sender's company
to-location destination geographic location from-location sender geographic location
to-voice-number person's voice phone number from-voice-number sender's voice phone number
to-fax-number destination fax phone number from-fax-number sender's fax phone number
comments unbroken comment string commentsX X'th line of comments
regarding Re: subject page-count # pages other than cover page
pageWidth page width in millimeters todays-date current date and time
pageLength page length in millimeters

If the comments string is longer than 35 characters, it is
broken, on word boundaries, into multiple POSTSCRIPT
strings commentsX where X is the line number; e.g. com-
ments2 for the second line of comments. By default fax-
cover will generate 20 commentsX strings, emitting null
string values for empty lines. This number can be changed
with the -m option; see below.

faxcover also emits a POSTSCRIPT procedure for breaking
comment strings into multiple lines using the POSTSCRIPT
font metric information. This procedure is named BreakIn-
toLines and has the following usage convention:
/rule (_____________________________________________) def
/y 191.4 def /x 0 def
y -30 0 { x exch moveto rule show } for
comments rule stringwidth pop {
x y 1 add moveto show /y y 30 sub def
} BreakIntoLines
where the width of the rule controls the length of each
line of comments (note that it is made slightly shorter
here for the purpose of presentation), x and y are ini-
tialized to coordinate locations on the page where the

comment string should be imaged, and the number 30 is the
inter-line spacing appropriate for the font used to image
the comment lines.

If information is unavailable for an item, the associated
POSTSCRIPT symbol is defined to be a null string.

Following the definition prologue, a cover sheet template
file is copied. This file is expected to be a POSTSCRIPT
program that uses the generated strings to create a cover
page. The template must include a showpage operator to
cause the page to be imaged. The above symbols will be
defined in the current dictionary. A trailing end opera-
tor is supplied by faxcover, so any manipulation of the
dictionary stack should leave the current dictionary on
the top of the stack on completion.

OPTIONS
-c comments Use comments for the comment string. You may
use '\n' to break it into several lines on
generated the cover page.

-C file Use file as the template file. The default
template file is named faxcover.ps. The tem-
plate file can also be specified by setting
the FAXCOVER environment variable. If the
template filename is not an absolute pathname,
then faxcover looks first for this file in the
home directory of the sender. If no such file
is present, then it looks in the library
directory where the HylaFAX client application
data are installed. If no template file is
located, faxcover will terminate without gen-
erating a cover page.

-D format Use format as the formatting specification
passed to strftime(3) when generating the time
and date placed on the cover page.

-f name Use name for the sender's identity.

-l location Use location for the geographic location of
the destination company.

-n number Use number for the destination fax machine
number.

-p count Use count for the count of pages to follow the
cover page.

-r regarding
Use regarding for the ``Re:'' field.

-s size Set the page size to use for the transmitted
facsimile. Facsimile are normally imaged with
a system-default page size (usually letter-
size pages, 8.5" by 11", for sites in North
America). Alternate page sizes are specified
symbolically using either the name or abbrevi-
ation of an entry in the pagesizes(5F)
database; e.g. a3 (ISO A3), a4 (ISO A4), a5
(ISO A5), a6 (ISO A6), b4 (ISO B4), na-let
(North American Letter), us-leg (American
Legal), us-led (American Ledger), us-exe
(American Executive), jp-let (Japanese Let-
ter), and jp-leg (Japanese Legal). Compar-
isons are case-insensitive and any match of a
substring of the full page-size name is suffi-
cient; e.g. ``legal'' would match ``American
Legal''.
Note that it may not be permissible to image
into the full page area; the guaranteed repro-
ducible area for a page is typically inset.
Also, note that while arbitrary page sizes can
be specified through the page size database,
only a limited set of page dimensions are sup-
ported by the Group 3 facsimile protocol.
Thus if an odd-size facsimile is submitted for
transmission it may not be possible to deter-
mine if it can be sent until the fax server
establishes communication with the remote fac-
simile machine.

-t name Use name for the receiver's identity.

-v number Use number for the receiver's voice phone num-
ber.

-x company Use company for the destination company name.

DIAGNOSTICS
Complaints about not being able to locate a template file.

FILES
~/.faxdb personal fax number
database
/usr/local/lib/fax/faxcover.ps default cover page tem-
plate
/usr/local/lib/fax/pagesizes page size database

BUGS
Information not supplied on the command line is currently
obtained from the ~/.faxdb file. faxcover should read
configuration parameters from the standard HylaFAX config-
uration files.