 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Winfax Pro 7.0 for Windows 95 Bob Burt bobburt@melbpc.org.au |
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So you thought you could send faxes in Windows 95 with simply a suitable fax modem and the native fax driver already available? Well, so you can, but WinFax PRO 7.0 for Windows 95 (WFax) turns fax (and even e-mail) message creation, handling, storage and retrieval into almost an art form.
WFax is a product of the Delrina Corporation (which a few months ago was acquired by Symantec for the princely sum of US$25.7 million). In accord with the recent trend to package like products together in Suite format, WFax will shortly be available also as a component of Delrina CommSuite 95. The other comms products will be TalkWorks, Cyberjack 7.0 and WinComm PRO 7.0.
This package
WFax comes as either a cluster of eight 3.5 inch disks or on CD-ROM, the latter having the advantages of convenience and additional material, such as a Training movie.
WFax is not a small add-on program, though. There are installation options, with 16 MB required for the "compact" option. I selected a "typical" installation, which grabbed more than 26 MB of my hard disk. However, there are over 100 pre-designed fax cover pages and other similar material which you could store in and access from floppies if you have only occasional use for them.
The documentation includes a Getting Started manual and a more substantial User's Guide both well illustrated and easy to follow. An extended Quick Reference Card is also a useful addition.
New features
Being the first version for Windows 95, even though it is a fifth-generation revision, WFax uses re-architectured 32-bit multitasking, multithreaded code, which delivers fast faxes that run in the background. The fax preview and annotation procedures have been improved and you can generate automatic hard copy confirmations of transmissions for billing or just record purposes.
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WFax sports a new device, the Delrina CommBar, which sits on the desktop to report the comms status. A flashing red indicator on the bar allows you to see all waiting messages, whether they be faxes, emails or voice messages without the need to launch and check each application specifically.
The application in action
Actually, there are several separate resources, all accessible though from the main application. These include a
Cover Page Designer and a Fax Viewer. Macros are included to enhance Word 6 or 7, Excel and Ami Pro 3.1.
The CommBar can be automatically loaded on start-up or through Start/Programs/WinFax PRO 7.0/CommBar. It is removed by a right-click of the mouse button, followed by a click on Exit. When I attempted to reload it, at first it seemed to me that it would not reappear. It eventually dawned on me that it was re-appearing as a small icon in the Windows Taskbar, alongside my
Norton System Agent and Volume icons - a behaviour which the manual had forgotten to describe. A double-click brought it back to life, of course.
That was about the only glitch in the normal procedures associated with running WFax and preparing and handling fax messages.
You can, of course, still fax a document from a Windows document-handling application, but instead of printing by using
Microsoft Fax on Fax: as your printer driver you select WinFax on
PUB:. Faxes can also be prepared directly in WFax and there is a useful Fax Wizard to guide you through the procedures, which can also activate when "printing" a fax from another Windows application.
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When you send a single page from WFax, the simplest procedure is to send a quick cover page and include a message in the text area. However, any document you create using a Windows application can be sent as a fax attachment. You can set up attachments in advance and organise them into folders. You can cut and paste graphics you have created in Windows applications into a cover page or add an OLE 2.0 object. Both the fax text and all attachments are actually sent as fax images, of course.
You can use Fax Viewer to tidy up the appearance of a fax before sending it to
- restore grey areas
- remove specks and transmission noise
- rotate pages for uniformity
- add or remove detail to improve the image
- edit and reposition areas of the fax image
- invert a fax image (black to white, white to black) for clarity or special effect.
When you have received a fax, you can write notes on it, add annotations and "stamp" the graphic with, say, "DRAFT" or "Confidential" or other designs already provided by WFax.
Using BFT
These initials stand for Binary File Transmission. Using BFT, you transmit the actual data files, bypassing the fax image stage. For this to work, you must be using a Class 1 or CAS modem and the recipient must also be using a BFT-capable modem or a fax machine which can receive BFT events. You cannot transfer files between Class 1 and CAS modems, though and the recipient's fax software must be capable of receiving binary files.
Sending BFT saves time and therefore possibly connection charges also. Even more time is saved by sending compressed BFT, but the recipient must be using WinFax PRO 4.0 or 7.0 with a Class 1 modem.
Optical Character Recognition
If you want to edit the text in a fax image, you can convert it to text with the OCR function in WFax. You can also convert other (PCX) images of text to text proper. WFax can be set to convert a fax to text automatically or by using manual recognition, where you wish to select only parts of the image for OCR.
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OCR is not, even now, 100 percent accurate, although accuracy improves if the faxes are "clean", text is at least 12 point and in normal Arial or a similar Swiss-type font, rather than Times Roman. You can set up WFax for
Interactive Text Edit and at the opportune time the Fax Viewer divides into two windows, with the original image at the top and the true text below it. You use the
Text and Edit menus to edit the text. The Text menu includes a Spell Checker.
With a Delrina WinFax Scanner or other TWAIN-compliant scanner you can scan an image directly into WFax to send immediately as a fax. As I do not own such a device, this aspect of WFax has remained untested. However, I do have a vintage scanner which still works under Windows 2.03, so I gave it a try. The technique, according to the manual, is to print the image to WFax from a Windows graphics package. I tried two such packages - Windows Paint and Micrografx Picture Publisher 7. The image, as a PCX or BMP file is loaded into the graphics application,
File|Print is clicked, WinFax is selected as the printer, printing starts, the WinFax Send dialog appears and the image is sent as a fax.
So goes the theory. In practice, I found that it did not work at all using Paint (the system locked up before transmitting). However, there was much more success with Picture Publisher. Sending the BMP file I had prepared worked, but out of control, in that only part of each line of the image was received by the recipient and the text was in very large Point size. Luckily, I discovered that Fax Viewer received PCX files, but not BMP files. Also, it requires the image width to be exactly 1728 pixels wide. So I reduced the width of the image accordingly, saved it as a PCX file and printed it with Picture Publisher, whereupon it was transmitted successfully at the proper 12 point image size. I think there is every probability that a correct-size BMP file would also be sent correctly, but I have not checked this.
Managing faxes
WFax has in-built resources to help you organise your material. You can use Phonebooks to address faxes, send to multiple recipients, modify event details (perhaps to use BFT in specific cases, for example), pre-select specific cover pages and include letterhead with faxes.
You can schedule WFax to automatically receive at set times, perhaps to receive during office hours only. Received faxes are stored in the
Receive Log folder. If you use a Class 1 modem you can poll remote fax stations to retrieve faxes. Conversely, you can use a remote station to gather faxes from your own computer.
You can use the file management features of WFax to organise events into folders. You can manage events in the Send and Receive Logs, modify them in the Outbox or use filters to display certain types of events. You can also set up files as predefined attachments.
Final comments
I suggest that you would not need this package for casual, intermittent private use, but it is likely to have strong appeal to businesses with heavy fax traffic, where good order and rapid retrieval of information is essential.
Reprinted from the March 1996 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
