Bug#175239: efax no longer understands dvi2fax' output

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hilmar Preusse <hille42@web.de> wrote:

> I believe I can:

Could you also try it with the dvi2fax version from unstable, copied to
your woody filesystem? It's just a shell script, so no problem there.

I cannot really test it, because I don't have a modem at all. When I
said I cannot reproduce it, it was because I didn't get the error
message described by Seb - but of course I get an error message about a
missing modem, and probably the modem is checked before the file is
read. 

The old version produces

$ file file.fax
file.fax: raw G3 data

while with the new one

file-new.fax: group 3 fax data, fine resolution (204x196 DPI)

> I've tried already to contact the packager of efax and the upstream
> author of efax but got never a reply. Sorry for not reporting that.
> efax is the version of sid, compiled on woody. dvi2fax the version of
> woody.

Before changing anything, we have to make sure what other fax programs
want. I never used any, but it might be that e.g. hylafax does better
(or works only) with the new format.

> ² dvi2fax belongs to tetex-bin. Do we need a depend on gs? 

We already have a Suggests: gs. I think this is sufficient¹ - dvi2fax is
not the main functionality of tetex-bin. And it makes perfect sense to
install tetex-bin without gs, e.g. on a server used for producing pdf or
ps files, but not for displaying or printing.

Regards, Frank

P.S. Was there any footnote ¹?
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie