Technical information

FAX IMAGING
75
Option Description
O The program can use the option "-o filename" to specify the output file to use. If not specified, it is
assumed that the output will be written to stdout
Entries in this file take priority over native and internal conversions. A line starting with # sign is ignored.
Here is an example associating .pdf files with our pdftotif:
pdf:viewers\pdftotif.exe:o:
5. Save and close the formatters.lst file.
6. Restart the VSI-FAX server.
Choosing a formatter
VSI-FAX determines which formatter to use for a given input file based on its extension.
First it looks for a matching entry in <VSIFAX>\lib\formatter.lst file and uses the first one available.
Then if no specific behavior is specified, it tries to use one of the internal formatters.
If there is still no match, on Windows platforms, it tries to find an application associated to this extension while
on Unix platform, it queries the imaging server (if one is defined).
If this was not helpful, it tries to determine the file type based on the first few bytes in the file.
And finally as a last resort it considers the document to be plain text.
Note
It is possible to provide the scheduler with the document file type (avoiding extension analysis and potential
mistakes) using ftp tag or the-F option available on vfx command. This way, you can be sure your document
will be treated correctly regardless of its name.
To check which file types are defined on the server and how they would be handled, you can use the option -D -v
filetypes on vinfo command. It will show the file types requiring the use of mstotif, the exact commands
executed to convert documents, or the DDE arguments used.
Here is a partial sample output:
> vinfo -D -v filetypes
list of valid file types:
ps 1 PostScript [tif]
ps2 1 PostScript Level 2 [tif]
pdf 1 Portable Data Format [tif]
tif 1 TIFF [pdf]
pcl 1 PCL [tif]
rtf 1 RTF [tif]
txt 1 Text [tif]
ep 1 Epson [tif]
fax 1 VSIFAX [tif]
bmp 1 Microsoft Bitmap [tif]
pcx 1 Microsoft Paint [tif]
tif 1 TIFF [tif]
arc 4 WinZip File [C:\PROGRA~1\WINZIP\winzip32.exe /print /ni "%1"]
bat 4 MS-DOS Batch File [%SystemRoot%\System32\NOTEPAD.EXE /p %1]
bmp 4 Bitmap Image ["C:\WINNT\system32\mspaint.exe" /p "%1"]
cmd 4 Windows NT Command Script [%SystemRoot%\System32\NOTEPAD.EXE /p %1]
cov 4 Fax Coverpage File [%SystemRoot%\system32\faxcover.exe /p "%1"]
doc 4 Microsoft Word Document [[REM
_DDE_Minimize][FileOpen("%1")][t=IsDocumentDirty()][FilePrint 0][SetDocumentDirty
t][DocClose]]
dot 4 Microsoft Word Template [[REM
_DDE_Minimize][FileOpen("%1")][t=IsDocumentDirty()][FilePrint 0][SetDocumentDirty