The Fax Modem Sourcebook [Paperback]

Andrew Margolis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471950726 | ISBN-13: 978-0471950721 | Publication Date: November 29, 1995 | Edition: 1

Most modems today have fax capability and come bundled with fax software, but their manuals are strangely silent about how the whole process works. This first part of this book gives a basic grounding in fax modem technology to both the novice and experienced user. It explains why fax machines are easy to set up and then work every time, but computer faxes are tricky to install and often fail to work reliably. The second part is a complete reference for technical users. From the computer hardware and system software on your desk through the modem itself to the international standards set by ANSI, the CCITT and ITU, this section brings all the relevant technical documentation together in one place. Part three shows how easy it is to write your own fax software. Full code is presented and developed for turning ordinary text into fax images and then transmitting them, as well as for receiving faxes and displaying them on screen or printing them out. A disk with full source code and many associated utilities is included.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Most modems today have fax capability and come bundled with fax software, but their manuals are strangely silent about how the whole process works. This first part of this book gives a basic grounding in fax modem technology to both the novice and experienced user. It explains why fax machines are easy to set up and then work every time, but computer faxes are tricky to install and often fail to work reliably. The second part is a complete reference for technical users. From the computer hardware and system software on your desk through the modem itself to the international standards set by ANSI, the CCITT and ITU, this section brings all the relevant technical documentation together in one place. Part three shows how easy it is to write your own fax software. Full code is presented and developed for turning ordinary text into fax images and then transmitting them, as well as for receiving faxes and displaying them on screen or printing them out. A disk with full source code and many associated utilities is included.

Product Details

• Paperback: 380 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 29, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471950726
• ISBN-13: 978-0471950721
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,340,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely comprehensive reference, July 11, 1999

By 

Stephen J. Friedl (Yorba Linda, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Fax Modem Sourcebook (Paperback)

This book receives five enthusiastic stars for the outstanding information content but only four stars for the included sample software.

I've been a commercial fax software developer for more than ten years, and I was surprised to see how much I learned in this book. The information content is the best I've ever seen for a fax modem book, and Andrew Margolis' writing style is professional and very easy to read. He is clearly a veteran of this business, and it seems like he really enjoys writing.

He exhaustively covers virtually everything that one would need to do anything with a fax modem: T.4 image structure, class 1, class 2, class 2.0, T.30 handshaking, and TIFF files. His coverage is exceptionally complete, and he does not limit himself to just the standards. Throughout the text he discusses where the real world conflicts with "how it should be" and how one works around them. One cannot wish these issues away, and discovering them early rather than later is simply golden.

Coverage of serial-port control is a bit thin, and it only addresses the PC platform, but this is such a minor nit that it does not detract from the work as a whole. UNIX developers will have to discover how to talk serial ports from some other source.

The only reason this does not receive five stars is that the sample software seems fairly pedestrian and not terribly good as an example. It seems that Andrew has sacrificed substantial performance for potential clarity, something I attribute to a likely conscious choice rather than an oversight. Since he is probably also a commercial fax developer, I suspect he didn't want to give away his secrets. I know that most of the "bit-banging" code is horrendously slow, although probably straightforward to read. In his position I may have made the same tradeoff, but the reader is left to perform these optimizations himself. Some of the optimizations are not at all obvious.

Anybody remotely involved in writing or supporting fax software should have this book. Other than my objections to the include sample code, I cannot think of a single thing that would have improved this book, other than it having it be in my library ten years ago.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complete fax development book, February 24, 2000

By 

Peter Lager (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fax Modem Sourcebook (Paperback)

I needed information how to develope a fax sending program for a fax modem, but it was hard to get the information. But this book solved all my problem.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book, clear, concise, and complete, October 10, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fax Modem Sourcebook (Paperback)

This book helped me to get my fax gateway development project up and running in (a rather sleepless) 3 days. Would recommend for anyone looking to implement facsimile send/receive. Much more readily comprehensible than the ITU specifications.