$Id: README,v 1.2 1995/09/15 17:11:10 kenh Exp $

This is the README for "sfax", a simple terminal-based interface to Sam
Leffler's HylaFAX package.


INSTALLATION

Sfax requires perl.  Either perl 4 or perl 5 is known to work.  To install
sfax, all you should need to do is to modify the first line of the script to
reflect the location of your Perl binary, copy sfax and the FAXform template
to the appropriate place on your system, and modify the "faxform" and
"sendmail" variables at the beginning of the program to reflect how things
are set up at your site.

In previous version of sfax, I had explicit paths to the location of
sendfax and faxcover.  This was done primarily to work around some name
collisions at the previous place that I worked.  You can put explicit paths
in there, but I personally prefer letting a user's PATH figure it out.  But
the final decision is up to you, of course :-)

This program has only been tested on Suns running SunOS 4, but I don't think
there will be many problems with portability (assuming you compiled Perl
and HylaFAX successfully).


USE

When run by a user, it pops up a form inside the editor defined by the
EDITOR environment variable (defaulting to 'vi) with various fields for the
user to fill in.  For example:

FaxTo:
FaxNumber:
FaxSubject:

You get the idea.  The sample form provided is the one we use at my workplace.
It contains a bunch of information on what the various fields mean.  The user
is allowed to place cover page comments between the "FaxCommentBegin" and
"FaxCommentEnd" fields.  Any text appended after the "FaxCommentEnd" field
will be sent as part of the fax, immediately following the cover page.  This
text message can also be e-mailed to someone by filling in the "Cc" entry on
the form.

After saving the form and exiting the editor, the user will be prompted for
the names of the files that they wish to append to the fax (if any).  Once
that is done, all of the information about the fax is displayed, and the
user is prompted for confirmation before the fax is actually sent.  Note that
if you don't add any files to send or included additional text in the
fax template, only a cover page will be sent.

If at any time the fax is aborted, the user's form file will be saved in a
file called "dead.fax" in the user's home directory.  If sfax sees a dead.fax
file, it will ask the user if they wish to use it instead.


CAVEATS

Sfax doesn't handle multiple recipients.  There's currently no way to change
the order or remove files once you've entered them.  Also, if you abort the
list of files to send is not saved.  Maybe this information should be encoded
into the template as well.


I'd appreciate any reports of problems, suggestions, or success.

Ken Hornstein
kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil

9/15/95
