Hello again Chris, List,
I just want to know if the File > List Sent Faxes > "open" is intended to display only the first page of a multi-page fax. In my case, the first page opens in gs, but there are no arrows to view other pages. I'm not complaining, I just want to kow my installation is working correctly.
In my testing, I scanned a printed faxed document after signing it and saved it as a PDF. The printed document was printed on salmon colored paper. Most of the scanned PDF was white. The received fax was mostly black. I repeated the scanning without changing the scanner setting, but scanned to PS file.
In the next test I put the PDF doc between the cover page and the PS doc. The PS doc was received correctly, but the PDF was mostly black again. This is what gimp had to say about the pdf:
/tmp/Fax00000001.TIF: Line length mismatch at line 0 of strip 0 (got 1729, expected 1728
Again I'm only curious about this behavior as I have no need to scanned PDFs. Heboland
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Thanks Chris,
For the record, my gs version is: 8.64. I don't have gv installed. I was of the impression they are equivalent, but your comment implies they are not. I will look into getting gv installed. My earlier post was also related to a possible gs issue. Maybe gv will fix both behaviors. Heboland
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Replying to myself for thread completeness, WOW what a difference gv made! From a configured repository I got gv 3.6.3. Now I don't need to run efax-gtk from a terminal, and I can scroll thru all the pages of sent or received fax viewed from the efax-gtk view.
Gv is as happy with the PDF file as was gs, so I would like to play with that some more. From the log file I would conclude that efax-gtk has no idea that the PDFtransmission was bad.
I want to clear the efax-gtk logfile before I try this. I don't see a button for that purpose, so it should be OK to remove it manually. If the bad PDF transmission continues, I'll report back on it in a new thread.
BTW Chris, is this Open Forum the best place for this thread, or should I go to Help? Heboland
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Thanks for the response, Chris.
i have an RX 500 Epson Stylus Phote printer scanner. With opensuse 11.2 I used XSane to do the scanning. The same setup can produce either a PS image or a PDF image.
gv seems to love either source file and displays them "identically".
I think that efax-gtk uses gv or gs to transform a PS or PDF file into a TIFF file for fax transmission. Neither man page has a word about TIFF.
If the PDF file corrupts again in sending it, now using gv, which I expect, I would like to attempt the conversion manually of the PDF to TIFF. Can you advise me how to accomplish this step? Heboland
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I would like to attempt the conversion manually of the PDF to TIFF
you could use:
1. sam2p which allow translating quite whatever graphic file (googling about sam2p drives to http://pts.szit.bme.hu/sam2p/
2. surely present command in your suse distro: (to use in a console !)
# pstopnm myfile.ps
to get a myfile.pnm; and afterwards
#pnmtotiff myfile.pnm
just take care reading instructions on respective man pages (do man pstopnm…), especially about resolution options which has to be specified; if not then the resolution could be lower than from original file.
Hope this helps
Charlie
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efax-gtk uses ghostscript to convert PDF files to tiffg3, in same way that it does the same with PS files. If ghostscript does not accept the PDF file then either the problem is with your distributions version of ghostscript or with your scanner. efax-gtk is irrelevant to this.
Chris
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Thanks Charlie, Chris,
Gents, list, a need for my fax is to be able to receive a form to be printed, filled in, signed, and faxed back to the source.
Chris, no need to be on the defensive. I'm happy with efax-gtk and thankful to you for developing it.
I'm only trying to understand why an apparently good pdf does not correctly convert to tiff. Am I correct in assuming that efax-gtk uses my installed gs to perform the pdf2tiffg3 conversion?
Chris, what I need is a gs invocation command that would convert my pdf to tiffg3. For example “gs -convert tiffg3 -o faxpage faxsend.pdf”.
Charlie, for the moment I want to follow as close as possible the conversion method used by Chris. I do have all the utilities you suggested except for sam2p. Your suggestions may be a good way to test for a bad PDF.
All, since I have the XP dual boot, I scanned the offending doc with the same RX500 scanner and it faxes perfectly. That seems to point at the Xsane scanner driver, but only with the PDF option.
It still seems to me that when the bad, scanned PDF (which displays perfectly) gets converted to tiffg3, something is going to complain. Gimp certainly does when if tries to display the misconverted tiff image.
This is probably to small a matter to send the little, scanned, bad, PDF to you Chris, but it might be simpler than to have you tell me how to convert it similar to the way efax-gtk does it.
Like I wrote previously, the efax-gtk logfile thinks the fax is sent successfully. The tiff files are send correctly, but only the PDF scanned by Xsane gets converted incorrectly. Heboland
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Replying to myself for thread continuity, I found a command line invocation for gs that converts PDF/PS to tiffg3. I got this off the web, but it works well with my gs (version 8.4).
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -sOutputFile=/share/DocsFHK/Tif/2010/Xsane.tif test-1.pdf -c quit
This invocation had results that surprised me. It converts the problem PDF to tiffg3 perfectly!
Another surprise was that using the same invocation to convert a PS file gives this warning: warning: ignoring zlib error: incorrect data check. Both the PDF and PS conversion return status is 0 and both conversions provide tiffg3 files that gimp is happy with.
So where does this leave me? Apparently efax-gtk either doesn't use my gs, or is invoked differently.
What I was after was a way to pretest whether a scanned PDF that displays correctly with gs/gv would fax correctly.
Chris, Charlie, any thoughts on this above development? Heboland
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On the question of PDF files, I am finding it difficult to understand your point. (I also found it very difficult to understand your point about viewing queued faxes, although I can now see what you were doing wrong.)
The reason why I find it difficult to understand your point about PDF files is that you originally referred to an error where gimp was trying to read a PDF file produced by your scanner, which seems to have nothing to do with efax. You have not told me what happens if you try to fax this PDF file using efax-gtk, nor have you told me what error efax-gtk reports (if any) if you do try to do so, nor how the scanned file reaches your computer.
efax-gtk uses the system gs binary to convert a PDF or PS file to tiffg3. efax-gtk invokes gs with the equivalent of:
Chris, thanks for your response and patience.
If I scan a document using Xsane on 11.2 using the RX500 HW and save the result as a PDF, that particlular PDF does not get sent correctly by my efax-gtk.
The gimp error comes when I read the tiff file created from this PDF by my efax-gtk. If I view this PDF in the sendfax directory, there is no apparent problem with it. I'm trying to fashion a method to pretest a scanned PDF to know in advance if it will fax correctly. That's what I hoped to get with the gs invocation.
Note that if instead I scan this same document to a PDF with XP using the same HW, efax-gtk will fax it without a problem. Also, Xsane on 11.2 can scan this same document with the same HW to a PS file and efax-gtk will send that without a problem.
Before this post, I tried the gs invocation you gave here. The %03d seems to be causing a problem from the command line, but I will try this command to see if it can find fault with the PDF that efax-gtk will not fax correctly. Heboland
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Replying back to myself for thread continuity, I was able to execute your gs expression, but I added the -c quit to the end of the option string. The results are identical to those produced by my gs invocation.
That is to say the PDF that efax-gtk faxes garbled converts to tiffg3 without error. Both the PDF and tiff version display correctly with gv and gimp respectively.
I'm wondering what else could cause the garbling? I can shift this PDF file around in a multi-file fax and all the other files fax correctly.
Can I send this little PDF to you Chris? Heboland
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Chris, thanks for the response.
The whole point of this exercise is that efax-gkt doesn not know this particular PDF did not get sent correctly!
There is nothing in the logfile to indicate a problem. efax-gkt completes the multipage fax with "success".. Only this particular PDF page is not sent correctly.
I believe there is something in this particular PDF that causes the transmission problem. Heboland.
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Chris, thanks for pursuing this!
I have a counter-offer here to make. My environment is opensuse 11.2 with kde 4.3.1, so okular has replaced kviewfax. I don't have any gnome installed now, so eog is not an easy get. If okular is acceptable, it does display the gs converted PDF that efax-gtk faxes incorrectly.
Since I have an XP dual boot, Microsoft Document Imaging also displays the gs converted PDF OK and the efax-gtk faxed version with black lines across the page.
If we pursue this much farther, you will want to know how I can see what I faxed. You may have a simple method to fax to yourself, but I'm using a neighbor. He let me setup his XP fax and he emails my send fax back to me as an email attachment.
For what it's worth, his XP Document Imaging was the first to discover that particular PDF being transmitted garbled.
Can you be satisfied with okular or do you want me to install the KDE3 kfaxview? Heboland
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It looks as if your scanner is producing a PDF file with defects, which gs will overlook but efax and gimp won't. There is probably not much that can be done about it, but if you send me the PDF file concerned I will try it out. I probably won't be able to do so until next week though.
Chris
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Thanks Chris,
I agree with your conclusion. For clarity I use Foxit as my PDF reader, so I view PDFs with it, gs, and gv, but not with gimp. gimp and okular view the tiffg3 file converted by gs.
I think I''ve seen your email address somewhere on this site, so I will try to email the bad PDF as an attachment.
For the record this is a sample of the okular errors it spits out when viewing the faxed PDF:
Fax4Decode: Warning, Test5-19-10.tiff: Line length mismatch at line 557 of strip 0 (got 1730, expected 1728).
Fax4Decode: Test5-19-10.tiff: Bad code word at line 558 of strip 0 (x 13).
Fax4Decode: Warning, Test5-19-10.tiff: Premature EOL at line 558 of strip 0 (got 13, expected 1728).
TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, Test5-19-10.tiff: unknown field with tag 292 (0x124) encountered.
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Hello again Chris, List,
I just want to know if the File > List Sent Faxes > "open" is intended to display only the first page of a multi-page fax. In my case, the first page opens in gs, but there are no arrows to view other pages. I'm not complaining, I just want to kow my installation is working correctly.
In my testing, I scanned a printed faxed document after signing it and saved it as a PDF. The printed document was printed on salmon colored paper. Most of the scanned PDF was white. The received fax was mostly black. I repeated the scanning without changing the scanner setting, but scanned to PS file.
In the next test I put the PDF doc between the cover page and the PS doc. The PS doc was received correctly, but the PDF was mostly black again. This is what gimp had to say about the pdf:
/tmp/Fax00000001.TIF: Line length mismatch at line 0 of strip 0 (got 1729, expected 1728
Again I'm only curious about this behavior as I have no need to scanned PDFs. Heboland
It should print all the pages. I should try something other than gs: if all else fails, I suggest gv.
I do not know why your PDF did not work correctly.
Chris
Thanks Chris,
For the record, my gs version is: 8.64. I don't have gv installed. I was of the impression they are equivalent, but your comment implies they are not. I will look into getting gv installed. My earlier post was also related to a possible gs issue. Maybe gv will fix both behaviors. Heboland
Replying to myself for thread completeness, WOW what a difference gv made! From a configured repository I got gv 3.6.3. Now I don't need to run efax-gtk from a terminal, and I can scroll thru all the pages of sent or received fax viewed from the efax-gtk view.
Gv is as happy with the PDF file as was gs, so I would like to play with that some more. From the log file I would conclude that efax-gtk has no idea that the PDFtransmission was bad.
I want to clear the efax-gtk logfile before I try this. I don't see a button for that purpose, so it should be OK to remove it manually. If the bad PDF transmission continues, I'll report back on it in a new thread.
BTW Chris, is this Open Forum the best place for this thread, or should I go to Help? Heboland
All one can say about the PDF file provided by your scanner is defective. That is not really a efax-gtk issue.
Yes, if you want to clear a logfile, just move or delete it.
Chris
Thanks for the response, Chris.
i have an RX 500 Epson Stylus Phote printer scanner. With opensuse 11.2 I used XSane to do the scanning. The same setup can produce either a PS image or a PDF image.
gv seems to love either source file and displays them "identically".
I think that efax-gtk uses gv or gs to transform a PS or PDF file into a TIFF file for fax transmission. Neither man page has a word about TIFF.
If the PDF file corrupts again in sending it, now using gv, which I expect, I would like to attempt the conversion manually of the PDF to TIFF. Can you advise me how to accomplish this step? Heboland
Hi heboland,
you could use:
1. sam2p which allow translating quite whatever graphic file (googling about sam2p drives to http://pts.szit.bme.hu/sam2p/
2. surely present command in your suse distro: (to use in a console !)
to get a myfile.pnm; and afterwards
just take care reading instructions on respective man pages (do man pstopnm…), especially about resolution options which has to be specified; if not then the resolution could be lower than from original file.
Hope this helps
Charlie
Hi again heboland,
sorry , I forgot to tell you about
also surely present in your suse..
okay…this 3 steps method seems to be the hard way….but it works !
charlie
efax-gtk uses ghostscript to convert PDF files to tiffg3, in same way that it does the same with PS files. If ghostscript does not accept the PDF file then either the problem is with your distributions version of ghostscript or with your scanner. efax-gtk is irrelevant to this.
Chris
Thanks Charlie, Chris,
Gents, list, a need for my fax is to be able to receive a form to be printed, filled in, signed, and faxed back to the source.
Chris, no need to be on the defensive. I'm happy with efax-gtk and thankful to you for developing it.
I'm only trying to understand why an apparently good pdf does not correctly convert to tiff. Am I correct in assuming that efax-gtk uses my installed gs to perform the pdf2tiffg3 conversion?
Chris, what I need is a gs invocation command that would convert my pdf to tiffg3. For example “gs -convert tiffg3 -o faxpage faxsend.pdf”.
Charlie, for the moment I want to follow as close as possible the conversion method used by Chris. I do have all the utilities you suggested except for sam2p. Your suggestions may be a good way to test for a bad PDF.
All, since I have the XP dual boot, I scanned the offending doc with the same RX500 scanner and it faxes perfectly. That seems to point at the Xsane scanner driver, but only with the PDF option.
It still seems to me that when the bad, scanned PDF (which displays perfectly) gets converted to tiffg3, something is going to complain. Gimp certainly does when if tries to display the misconverted tiff image.
This is probably to small a matter to send the little, scanned, bad, PDF to you Chris, but it might be simpler than to have you tell me how to convert it similar to the way efax-gtk does it.
Like I wrote previously, the efax-gtk logfile thinks the fax is sent successfully. The tiff files are send correctly, but only the PDF scanned by Xsane gets converted incorrectly. Heboland
Replying to myself for thread continuity, I found a command line invocation for gs that converts PDF/PS to tiffg3. I got this off the web, but it works well with my gs (version 8.4).
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -sOutputFile=/share/DocsFHK/Tif/2010/Xsane.tif test-1.pdf -c quit
This invocation had results that surprised me. It converts the problem PDF to tiffg3 perfectly!
Another surprise was that using the same invocation to convert a PS file gives this warning: warning: ignoring zlib error: incorrect data check. Both the PDF and PS conversion return status is 0 and both conversions provide tiffg3 files that gimp is happy with.
So where does this leave me? Apparently efax-gtk either doesn't use my gs, or is invoked differently.
What I was after was a way to pretest whether a scanned PDF that displays correctly with gs/gv would fax correctly.
Chris, Charlie, any thoughts on this above development? Heboland
On the question of PDF files, I am finding it difficult to understand your point. (I also found it very difficult to understand your point about viewing queued faxes, although I can now see what you were doing wrong.)
The reason why I find it difficult to understand your point about PDF files is that you originally referred to an error where gimp was trying to read a PDF file produced by your scanner, which seems to have nothing to do with efax. You have not told me what happens if you try to fax this PDF file using efax-gtk, nor have you told me what error efax-gtk reports (if any) if you do try to do so, nor how the scanned file reaches your computer.
efax-gtk uses the system gs binary to convert a PDF or PS file to tiffg3. efax-gtk invokes gs with the equivalent of:
gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dMaxStripSize=0 -r204x196 -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -sOutputFile=.%03d -sPAPERSIZE=
Chris
Chris, thanks for your response and patience.
If I scan a document using Xsane on 11.2 using the RX500 HW and save the result as a PDF, that particlular PDF does not get sent correctly by my efax-gtk.
The gimp error comes when I read the tiff file created from this PDF by my efax-gtk. If I view this PDF in the sendfax directory, there is no apparent problem with it. I'm trying to fashion a method to pretest a scanned PDF to know in advance if it will fax correctly. That's what I hoped to get with the gs invocation.
Note that if instead I scan this same document to a PDF with XP using the same HW, efax-gtk will fax it without a problem. Also, Xsane on 11.2 can scan this same document with the same HW to a PS file and efax-gtk will send that without a problem.
Before this post, I tried the gs invocation you gave here. The %03d seems to be causing a problem from the command line, but I will try this command to see if it can find fault with the PDF that efax-gtk will not fax correctly. Heboland
Replying back to myself for thread continuity, I was able to execute your gs expression, but I added the -c quit to the end of the option string. The results are identical to those produced by my gs invocation.
That is to say the PDF that efax-gtk faxes garbled converts to tiffg3 without error. Both the PDF and tiff version display correctly with gv and gimp respectively.
I'm wondering what else could cause the garbling? I can shift this PDF file around in a multi-file fax and all the other files fax correctly.
Can I send this little PDF to you Chris? Heboland
Can you give me the error that efax-gtk reports?
Chris
Chris, thanks for the response.
The whole point of this exercise is that efax-gkt doesn not know this particular PDF did not get sent correctly!
There is nothing in the logfile to indicate a problem. efax-gkt completes the multipage fax with "success".. Only this particular PDF page is not sent correctly.
I believe there is something in this particular PDF that causes the transmission problem. Heboland.
OK. Does kfaxview or eog correctly display the tiff file(s) produced by gs from this particular PDF file?
Chris
Chris, thanks for pursuing this!
I have a counter-offer here to make. My environment is opensuse 11.2 with kde 4.3.1, so okular has replaced kviewfax. I don't have any gnome installed now, so eog is not an easy get. If okular is acceptable, it does display the gs converted PDF that efax-gtk faxes incorrectly.
Since I have an XP dual boot, Microsoft Document Imaging also displays the gs converted PDF OK and the efax-gtk faxed version with black lines across the page.
If we pursue this much farther, you will want to know how I can see what I faxed. You may have a simple method to fax to yourself, but I'm using a neighbor. He let me setup his XP fax and he emails my send fax back to me as an email attachment.
For what it's worth, his XP Document Imaging was the first to discover that particular PDF being transmitted garbled.
Can you be satisfied with okular or do you want me to install the KDE3 kfaxview? Heboland
okular is fine.
It looks as if your scanner is producing a PDF file with defects, which gs will overlook but efax and gimp won't. There is probably not much that can be done about it, but if you send me the PDF file concerned I will try it out. I probably won't be able to do so until next week though.
Chris
Thanks Chris,
I agree with your conclusion. For clarity I use Foxit as my PDF reader, so I view PDFs with it, gs, and gv, but not with gimp. gimp and okular view the tiffg3 file converted by gs.
I think I''ve seen your email address somewhere on this site, so I will try to email the bad PDF as an attachment.
For the record this is a sample of the okular errors it spits out when viewing the faxed PDF:
Fax4Decode: Warning, Test5-19-10.tiff: Line length mismatch at line 557 of strip 0 (got 1730, expected 1728).
Fax4Decode: Test5-19-10.tiff: Bad code word at line 558 of strip 0 (x 13).
Fax4Decode: Warning, Test5-19-10.tiff: Premature EOL at line 558 of strip 0 (got 13, expected 1728).
TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, Test5-19-10.tiff: unknown field with tag 292 (0x124) encountered.
All sourceforge users (including you) have an e-mail address comprising the user name (in my case cvine) followed by @users.sourceforge.net
Replying back to myself again, Chris, will I hear back from you here regarding the email attachments I sent to you?
I don't mean to rush you, but rather to confirm that you got the email. Heboland