Appendix 6: Fax File Formats

About Fax File Formats:

PCX

PCX is a singe-page graphic file format based on bitmaps with R3 compression.

DCX

DCX is a multi-page graphic file format based on the PCX format.

TIFF

TIF is a standard file format for graphics files with many variations.

Text

All servers provide text to fax file processing which will perform automatic word-wrapping to fit the page width and insert pagebreaks to fit the page length. The fonts used for the fax file creation can be changed if required via INI file settings.

Dialogic Only

The margin size, fonts and other formatting in text files can be controlled by special escape codes, listed below.

Dialogic ASCII Escape Codes

The following table lists the features you can control and the ASCII escape sequences.

Tab stop setting: n = number of tab stops.

Tabs (number of): fixed tabs defined by parameter n in Tab stop setting. Default at position 1, 9, 17, 25...

Sample sequence to specify bold ASCII characters for the following: Dialogic

<insert ASCII code 27>B1Dialogic<insert ASCII code 27>B0

Note: Follow your ASCII editor instructions to insert ASCII code 27 <Escape>.Use upper case letters with no spaces in the escape sequence.

Server-Specific Fax Support

Dialogic cards differ slightly in their support of VBFax features, in addition to the differences in Fax File Formats.

Fax Format Support

Dialogic Fax

TIFF and text only. The Dialogic text converter supports a range of escape codes for text formatting - see Dialogic ASCII Escape Codes. If a complete path is not specified, the default faxout directory will be used.

PageCount

PagesTotal Property

This property is returned on transmitted faxes. It is not valid from Dialogic cards until the fax transmission has been completed. This also has the side-effect that the total number of pages cannot be displayed on fax cover pages.

Overlay Files

Dialogic does not have built-in support for graphics files embedded in text.

Fax Page Headers

The default fax header is placed at the top of each fax. It can be changed using the PageHeader property of the VBFaxJob object. The header definition can include the following special strings (described below):

<To.Name>

<To.Fax>

<To.Company>

<From.Name>

<From.Fax>

<From.Company>

<Date>

In addition, these server specific features are supported:

Dialogic

Dialogic supports the field %P which is replaced by the page number, %R, which is replaced by the remote fax CSID, if available, and <Date>, which contains the date and time of transmission.

The default Dialogic header is:

<Date> To: <To.Name> Fax: <To.Fax> From: <From.Name> <From.Fax> Pg# %P

Changing the page header at runtime

To change the page header for each fax, modify the page header property of each recipient.

EXAMPLE

If using the SendFax control, use this code in the Enter event:

Sendfax2.CurrentJob(Channel).PageHeader = "my page header"

Cover Page Definition

How to edit and customize the Cover Page template

The default template for the cover page is default.cvr. For Dialogic fax support the file is installed in c:\vbvrel3\faxout by default. This directory can be changed with the Faxout ini setting. The extension CVR stand for cover as in cover page and is a text file. Other cover pages can be selected and used using the CoverPageFile property in the VBFaxJob object, and also with the FaxCoverAlternateFile property in the SendFax control.

Dialogic

The Dialogic driver also support some special escape codes within the cover page and other text documents. For more information, see Dialogic ASCII Escape Codes.

The default file DEFAULT.CVR can be opened and edited using notepad.exe. The file as installed looks like this:

Fields available for use in cover pages are:

Custom Cover Pages

If the generated cover page does not meet your cover page requirements, we suggest using a layout/print OCX such as VSVIEW which allows more sophisticated text processing and merging of graphics to create a fax image file. Another way to do this is to use controls on a VB form which can then be printed to the fax print driver using the Visual Basic Print command.

Adding a custom cover page - SendFax control

To add the generated cover page to the fax, set the CoverPage option in the SendFax control to image file. Use a filename that contains the property %channel% e.g. c:\mycover%channel%.tif. Including this field will make each file specific to a channel which will avoid file name conflicts.

Adding a custom cover page - Object Library

If creating a fax using the VBFax object library, add the cover page by creating a new VBFaxDocument object, and adding this as the first document of the fax.

INI Settings

[VBFax]

DateTimeString

A string that defines the format of the <Date> field in fax headers and cover pages. Default is %#c, which represents the format: day mm/dd/yy hh:mm:ss. Components that can be used in this string are:

• %#c Long date and time representation, appropriate for current locale. For example: "Tuesday, March 14, 1995, 12:41:29".

• %#x Long date representation, appropriate to current locale. For example: "Tuesday, March 14, 1995".

• %a Abbreviated weekday name

• %A Full weekday name

• %b Abbreviated month name

• %B Full month name

• %c Date and time representation appropriate for locale

• %d Day of month as decimal number (01 31)

• %H Hour in 24-hour format (00 23)

• %I Hour in 12-hour format (01 12)

• %j Day of year as decimal number (001 366)

• %m Month as decimal number (01 12)

• %M Minute as decimal number (00 59)

• %p Current locale's A.M./P.M. indicator for 12-hour clock

• %S Second as decimal number (00 59)

• %U Week of year as decimal number, with Sunday as first day of week (00 51)

• %w Weekday as decimal number (0 6; Sunday is 0)

• %W Week of year as decimal number, with Monday as first day of week (00 51)

• %x Date representation for current locale

• %X Time representation for current locale

• %y Year without century, as decimal number (00 99)

• %Y Year with century, as decimal number

• %z, %Z Time-zone name or abbreviation; no characters if time zone is unknown

• %% Percent sign

FaxPathIn

Defines the directory where incoming faxes are stored: default c:\vbvrel3\faxin

FaxPathOut

Defines the default directory for outgoing faxes, if a full path is not specified for the filename: default c:\vbvrel3\faxout

[Dialogic]

RcvFlags

Provides additional flags for the fax receive operation with Dialogic cards. Possible settings are any of the following values:

And/or one of:

And/or one of: