Subject: RE: Question on FaxConnect Results..

From: "Manros, Carl-Uno B" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:58:31 -0800

Dan,

Just one comment on you latest message on Fax Cover Pages.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Wing [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, February 04, 1999 4:13 PM
> To: Richard Shockey
> Cc: McIntyre, Lloyd; Cancio, Vivian; Michael Spann; [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Question on FaxConnect Results..
> 
>
--- snipp, snipp---- 

>As such, I do not see it is reasonable for a user with a copy of Microsoft
>Word, some PS- or Word- or RTF- or ASCII-to-TIFF converter, and a copy of
>an off-the-shelf mailer (Eudora, Outlook, Netscape) to somehow watermark
>the TIFF pages or create a coverpage in addition to the "To:" field the
user 
>is already typing into her off-the-shelf mailer.

All the computer fax software that I have seen, from MS and everybody else,
have provisions for generating a cover page, based on information that
you fill out in a window, when you use the fax software which to the user
looks 
like a printer in Word etc. Why should sending it over email be so
different?

BTW, IPP provides as an option for cover pages to be printed (we call them
job-sheets), based on a text string that is sent as a job attribute, rather 
than a generated page inside the document data.

Carl-Uno

---

From: Dan Wing <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 17:58:08 -0800 (PST)

On Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:58:31 -0800, Manros, Carl-Uno B wrote:

> All the computer fax software that I have seen, from MS and everybody
> else, have provisions for generating a cover page, based on
> information that you fill out in a window, when you use the fax
> software which to the user looks like a printer in Word etc. 

Agreed.

>Why should sending it over email be so different?

If fax-over-smtp is similarly implemented to look like a printer
driver, it can have a similar -- in fact almost identical -- user
interface to existing fax-over-modem programs from Symantec,
Microsoft, and others.

However, if fax-over-smtp is implemented using a standard mail
user agent, such as Eudora/Netscape/Outlook/etc., those standard
mail user agents do NOT prompt for this coverpage information.

Universal messaging, the mantra of literally dozens of companies, requires
a universal way of specifying the same thing, and the ability to convert a
message from one message medium to another.  If vital routing information,
such as a fax coverpage, is scanned and essentially unusable to a computer
(only usable to a human), it can no longer be converted to another message
medium.

> than a generated page inside the document data.

All I'm saying is that fax-over-SMTP should do the same -- specify
coverpage inforamtion outside of the document data itself.  Such
information doesn't belong in the document itself.

-Dan Wing