I’m currently amidst solving problems with a PERL script designed to send PDF-containing emails as faxes. Apparently, the command it invokes uses pdftk (which is a C wrapper around a Java library named iText) to translate each PDF into an image (or images) to send.
Pre-processing the PDFs with figjam, another set of PERL scripts working through LaTeX, reduced the damage in that the PDFs are correctly oriented so that pdftk only elides a little over a cm about 1/3 of the way along each page. Up to that point, most of the page would be blank.
The simplest way to send flawless PDFs seems to be disassembling the email into PDF components, then butcheing the PERL script to use ImageMagick’s convert command to turn each PDF into a set of TIFFs, then send those unaltered through HylaFax’s sendfax module (HylaFax is a set of C++ modules).
I really appreciate the “software Lego™”approach of Unix (in this case Linux), in that all of the pieces are included, so replacing one chunk or layer of your model isn’t the nightmare it so readily becomes on a monolithic proprietary system.
Pre-processing the PDFs with figjam, another set of PERL scripts working through LaTeX, reduced the damage in that the PDFs are correctly oriented so that pdftk only elides a little over a cm about 1/3 of the way along each page. Up to that point, most of the page would be blank.
The simplest way to send flawless PDFs seems to be disassembling the email into PDF components, then butcheing the PERL script to use ImageMagick’s convert command to turn each PDF into a set of TIFFs, then send those unaltered through HylaFax’s sendfax module (HylaFax is a set of C++ modules).
I really appreciate the “software Lego™”approach of Unix (in this case Linux), in that all of the pieces are included, so replacing one chunk or layer of your model isn’t the nightmare it so readily becomes on a monolithic proprietary system.
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