Re: should I get Fax Modem & Faxination or just a regular fax machine?

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <hHDHSjD.rocketusa@delphi.com>,
Rocket Press...a Litmag  <rocketusa@delphi.com> wrote:
>  
> Should I get some fax machine for a couple hundred bucks..or buy some old used
> fax modem and get faxination?

You might want to wait for PMPFax.  It cannot possibly be less reliable
than Faxination.

> Really, I most just send text, but I would like to be able to send different
> sized fonts...can faxination handle this?

Yep.  Faxination acts like a printer driver, so it can be used from
any GS/OS desktop program that supports the standard Print Manager
toolset (printer selected by the "DC Printer" or "Net Printer" Control
Panel, File menu has "Page Setup..." and "Print..." items).

You can fax anything that the program can generate as output.  The
resolution isn't too good: it looks like Faxination is generating
low resolution output from the program, then sending several fax
pixels for each image pixel.

You cannot use Faxination directly with non-desktop programs, or with
desktop programs that do not support the Print Manager, but it may be
possible to output the desired file in a form that can be used with a
desktop program such as GraphicWriter III or AppleWorks GS.

The fax is sent via a two-stage process: you "print" the document from
within the application, which causes Faxination to save the fax image
to disk (Faxination must be selected as the active printer in the "DC
Printer" control panel).  You can choose to send it immediately or
delay sending it until you do it manually at a later stage using the
Faxination desk accessory.  (The latter method is necessary when
printing from AppleWorks GS, or you will get multiple copies of some
pages being sent.)

You can view and print the fax that has been generated.  (I've never
used the print facility.)

Faxination can generate a cover page for you, but it looks _really_
bad.  If you are doing anything serious with it, I'd suggest setting
up a cover page in a page layout program (e.g. GraphicWriter or
AppleWorks GS), and sending all faxes with the cover sheet inserted at
the beginning.

> how about faxination's receive mode?

I haven't used it.  It works by receiving the fax to a file on disk.
This can then be viewed or printed, as with sent faxes.  The fax is
stored on disk as a very high resolution graphic image, so it is
necessary to scroll sideways to see the whole thing.

There is no support for optical character recognition ("InWords" would
be the obvious answer, but it only supports scanning an image directly
using a Quickie, not reading a saved fax from a file on disk.)

You can set Faxination to receive automatically in the background (I
wouldn't recommend this), or set it into receive mode.

> Could I use the 512k ROM OO as a type of dumb terminal for faxes?
> What are the requirements for faxination?  Thanks for any info...

I'll second what Bill said - you need a hard drive, ROM 1 and System
5.0 or later (probably 6.0 or later) to be able to use Faxination.  I
expect PMPFax will have similar requirements.  Faxes take up a lot of
disk space, and it is completely impractical to use a 3.5" drive.

> And, lastly. can faxination handle faxes sent to me via paper fax machines?

It can't tell where the fax came from (or is going to).  "Real" fax
machines should work just as well as fax modems.  I've sent faxes to a
real fax machine, and a couple to unknown destinations that might have
been a fax machine or fax modem.

I don't know how it copes with varying source paper sizes - its sent
faxes always use "US Letter" sized paper (annoying for those of us in
countries that use ISO A4 as the standard paper size), even the
automatic cover page, which only uses about a third of the paper.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand