The Printer Database

The Printer database records describe the printers that are accessible from the Faximum server. The printers may be used to print outgoing faxes. To print an outgoing fax choose Print on Send Fax from the Options pulldown menu on the Fax Composer window.

Note that Faximum uses a different print mechanism for printing received faxes. See Printing a Fax.

The Fax System Administrator is responsible for the Printer Database and may assign access to individual users. After setting up the printers in the database, select the Permissions database and select Use Printers. If the Use Printers box is greyed out it means that the user already has permission to use all printers.

The printer records contain:

• Printer Name - An informal, descriptive name "Printer in Pam's office"
• Print Command - The shell command that is to be executed in order to print a fax.

Substitution patterns are expanded before the command is invoked. The following substitution patterns are allowed in the command string (they do not represent shell or environment variables):

• $file - full pathname of the TIFF file containing the fax image
• $pages - total number of pages in the TIFF file
• $username - user making the print request

When adding a printer to the Printer database, specify one of the following commands in the command line:

• /opt/FAXserver/bin/tiffhp - converts fax into PCL format
• /opt/FAXserver/bin/tiffps - converts fax into Postscript format

Note that the home directory for the Faximum server (/opt/FAXserver) can be changed by the system administrator. See Faximum Client/Server Directories for more information.

For more information on tiffhp, see tiffhp - Convert TIFF Files to HP PCL. For more information on tiffps, see tiffps - Convert TIFF Files to PostScript.

The fax is a TIFF-F file. The above commands process the file into the correct format for the printer. For example, the following command line uses a PostScript named printer1 for printing faxes as PostScript files:

/opt/FAXserver/bin/tiffps $file | lp -dprinter1

If the printer were, on the other hand, an HP LaserJet III printer, one would use:

/opt/FAXserver/bin/tiffhp -c -300 $file | lp -dprinter1