chris_c_
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I climbed the summit, spoke with the fax guru, and have just now returned with the answer to the burning question, how to finally get modern 2015 color fax send/receive capabilities in iPBX...
Short answer: we have to upgrade to HylaFAX+ (notice the "PLUS"). The current iPBX installer uses the outdated, monochrome only, "HylaFAX" (without the "plus").
The skeptics might ask:
Q: Why would we even want to receive and send color fax ?
A: It's the 21st century, and inexpensive color fax/scanner/printer/copier "multi function centers" are in every office. For example HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 , Brother MFC, Sharp, many top brands. Odds are very high you WILL receive a color fax, or want to send a fax out to a color capable multi function color fax.
In reality, the faxed document will almost always go directly into either email, or into an enterprise digital filing "shared folder," and not automatically print on paper! Therefore the quality should the quality of the original document that was transmitted to you, and vice versa.
These "multi function center" fax senders default to try color, and only fall back to black and white, when the fax receiver cannot support color or grayscale.
Until now, the HylaFAX in iPBX was receiving (and sending) ONLY in black and white, which caused normal color and grayscale documents sent by those "multi function centers" to become destroyed by dithering! Dithering's a simulation of grayscale with a large pattern of black and white dots of varying density. It looks terrible, and makes color pages unreadable and impossible to work with, requiring refaxing and lost time! Black-and-white only faxing causes a massive waste of time and money.
In consideration of the above news, I nominate HylaFAX+ to replace HylaFAX in the iPBX installer script.
And create a command line, for the supported variants of linux, to upgrade existing installations from HylaFAX to HylaFAX+.
Current version HylaFAX+ 5.5.6 (released April 2015), Source package, and many pre built binaries:
http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/download.php
The Differences between HylaFAX and HylaFAX+
http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php
-Chris
Short answer: we have to upgrade to HylaFAX+ (notice the "PLUS"). The current iPBX installer uses the outdated, monochrome only, "HylaFAX" (without the "plus").
The skeptics might ask:
Q: Why would we even want to receive and send color fax ?
A: It's the 21st century, and inexpensive color fax/scanner/printer/copier "multi function centers" are in every office. For example HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 , Brother MFC, Sharp, many top brands. Odds are very high you WILL receive a color fax, or want to send a fax out to a color capable multi function color fax.
In reality, the faxed document will almost always go directly into either email, or into an enterprise digital filing "shared folder," and not automatically print on paper! Therefore the quality should the quality of the original document that was transmitted to you, and vice versa.
These "multi function center" fax senders default to try color, and only fall back to black and white, when the fax receiver cannot support color or grayscale.
Until now, the HylaFAX in iPBX was receiving (and sending) ONLY in black and white, which caused normal color and grayscale documents sent by those "multi function centers" to become destroyed by dithering! Dithering's a simulation of grayscale with a large pattern of black and white dots of varying density. It looks terrible, and makes color pages unreadable and impossible to work with, requiring refaxing and lost time! Black-and-white only faxing causes a massive waste of time and money.
Question. (Color fax receive was first offered by HylaFAX, thru awkward patched packages, in 2004-2005.) It's now 2015, what's the current status of receiving color (or grayscale... JPEG or JBIG) fax from, for example, HP OfficeJet Pro 8600, Brother MFC, Sharp, ect, multi function fax/printer/scanner/copier ?
Short answer: you need to use HylaFAX+.
Long answer...
Color fax receiving support was added in HylaFAX 4.2.2 for Class 1/1.0. However, because that's how the data comes from the sender's fax machine, the fax image was stored in the TIFF as ITULAB colorspace in JPEG... which most JPEG-enabled TIFF viewers are not going to be able to handle (or JPEG viewers, for that matter, if you were to strip-out the JPEG from the TIFF). So, for most users, it was really not useful.
Developments in color fax support after that point were made in HylaFAX+.
Color fax support was added to Class 2.0/2.1 in HylaFAX+ 5.1.0.
Color fax sending support was added in HylaFAX+ 5.4.0.
Also in HylaFAX+ 5.4.0 received color faxes were converted from ITULAB colorspace to YCbCr. At that point color faxes became useful for most users.
Some improvements to color fax support have occurred since then, too (like better page and data size support).
Thanks,
Lee.
In consideration of the above news, I nominate HylaFAX+ to replace HylaFAX in the iPBX installer script.
And create a command line, for the supported variants of linux, to upgrade existing installations from HylaFAX to HylaFAX+.
Current version HylaFAX+ 5.5.6 (released April 2015), Source package, and many pre built binaries:
http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/download.php
The Differences between HylaFAX and HylaFAX+
http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php
-Chris