Hylafax/FaxMail with unicode encoding

Arun N. — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:26:36 +0000

Dealing with Unicode encoding can be a challenging task. However, it’s crucial for ensuring the accurate transmission of messages. In this blog post, we’ll explore some scripts and techniques that can help you work with Unicode in Hylafax/FaxMail, specifically for incoming HTML and text faxes.

HTML Fax Handling:

When it comes to processing HTML faxes with Unicode encoding, you can use the following script

#!/bin/bash
cp -pf $1 /tmp/email.html
/usr/bin/lynx -dump -display_charset=utf-8 /tmp/email.html > /tmp/html_txt
/usr/bin/uniprint -font /etc/hylafax/faxmail/Cyberbit.ttf -in /tmp/html_txt -out /tmp/html_txt.uni
cat /tmp/html_txt.uni | /etc/hylafax/faxmail/filter.pl
rm /tmp/email.html
rm /tmp/html_txt
rm /tmp/html_txt.uni

Here’s a breakdown of what this script does:

It copies the incoming fax to a temporary file, /tmp/email.html.
Using lynx, redirect the HTML content to plain text while specifying the UTF-8 character set for proper encoding.
The uniprint utility is then used to apply the Cyberbit.ttf font to the converted text, saving it as /tmp/html_txt.uni.
Finally, it pipes the content through filter.pl, a Perl script that processes the text.

Plain Text Fax Handling:

For plain text faxes with Unicode encoding, you can utilize this script

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/uniprint -font /etc/hylafax/faxmail/Cyberbit.ttf -in $1 -out /tmp/plain_txt

cat /tmp/plain_txt | /etc/hylafax/faxmail/filter.pl

rm /tmp/plain_txt

This script is more straightforward. It uses uniprint to apply the Cyberbit.ttf font to the plain text content, and then pipes it through filter.pl.

filter.pl:

The filter.pl Perl script is responsible for processing the text content, including stripping out any “showpage” directives.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Read from the standard input

@text=;

$size=@text;

# Count the number of "showpage"

$count=0;

for($i=0;$i<=$size;$i++){if($text[$i] =~ /showpage/){$count++;}}

# Discard the last line that contains "showpage"

$num=1;

for($i=0;$i<=$size;$i++){

if($text[$i] =~ /showpage/){

if($num!=$count){$num++;}

else{$text[$i]=~s/showpage//g;}

print $text[$i];

This Perl script processes the text, counts the “showpage” occurrences, and removes the last “showpage” directive.

Fax – Arun’s blog

Hylafax/FaxMail with unicode encoding