RE: Fax format TIFF files (www.efax.com)

[(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>]

On 03-Oct-99 Carl Fink wrote:
> I'm using the free (advertising-supported) Internet fax service at
> www.efax.com.  They assign you an arbitrary phone number, and faxes to
> that address are received by faxmodem and mailed to you.
> 
> The file comes as a TIFF.  I have several viewers that can read TIFFs
> (xv, xloadimage) and a fine bitmap editor (the GIMP), but apparently
> efax.com encapsulates multiple-page faxes into a single TIFF, and all
> of those programs display only the first page.
> 
> Can anyone recommend a program (preferably, of course, Debianized)
> that will display all the pages of a fax-format TIFF?

ImageMagick will do the job nicely. With IM installed, enter

  display file.tif

Using as a test a file which Carl sent me, this command takes a few
moments to load. Then (on my screen at least) you get a screenful which
is a partial view of the first page with a little "pan icon". You can pan
round this page using the arrow keys, or by holding down the left mouse
button on the frame in the "pan icon" and dragging it around.

For the next page, right-button on the image and select "Next" from
the menu which pops up. Again after a few moments, you get the next
page. And so on. To go back to previous pages, right-button and
select "Former".

An alternative is like:

   display -geometry 600x800 file.tif

With this, the program calculates a resized image before displaying
it, and this takes rather longer: it took 25 seconds for the first
page to come up, and about 20 seconds (after selecting "Next") for
the next page. Admittedly I'm not using a fast machine (pentium 150).

Or (but this seems to give poorer quality) you can click on "View"
with the first command and then select "Half Size" etc.

You can also use the ImageMagick "convert" command in the form

  convert +adjoin file.tif file.gif

(or select another format instead of GIF), which will then produce
a separate file for each page:

  file.gif.0
  file.gif.1
  ...

which can each be viewed stand-alone by any standard viewer.

According to Carl, "apt-get install imagemagick" is all you need to
know ...

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 04-Oct-99                                       Time: 14:47:12
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