package: hylafax-server
severity: serious (Chris intends to upgrade it from wishlist to serious,
for reasons, see below)
Giuseppe, Remi, Phillipp,
I'm writing you about this excellent Bug that Phillip Kempgen filed in
2008, why isn't HylaFAX+ included in debian?
Giuseppe you had question about what makes HylaFAX+ so much better, and
I've got the answers for you...
Short version: I nominate you Giuseppe to make HylaFAX+ 5.5.6 available
as a deb package in the main debian repo.
Long version:
The most recent version 5.5.6 was released April 2015, existing since
2005 as free open source code available on sourceforce.
HylaFAX+ has more up to date features, performance improvements, and
bugs fixes than the Hylafax 6.0.6 (released 2012) that you currently offer.
The projects are probably 95% similar, they forked in 2005, but in 2012
Hylafax got into a leapfrog race on version numbers vs Hylafax+ 5.5.6.
HylaFAX+ is superior because of many enhancements and bug fixes.
For example it solves a longstanding issue of incompatibility with color
and grayscale faxes. It produces compatible tiff and pdf pages, while
Hylafax 6.0.6 can't (due to a complicated bug about ITULab colorspace
unable to be understood/converted by libtiff and libjpeg, and those 2
package developers despite receiving patches, unable to change their
code without causing breakage elsewhere, thus forcing a manual patch and
recompile from source of not only libtiff and libjpeg but also of many
other dependent packages on the system, which is totally
ridiculous/unfeasible, and this has been stuck that way in hylafax for
about ten years since 2005.).
HylaFAX+ solved this bug by enlisting LittleCMS developer Marti Maria to
solve this problem without the image degradation from having to
decompress and re-compress the jpeg image of the page.
Everyone who is aware of the two packages, installs Hylafax+.
You should at least offer both Hylafax, and Hylafax+, packages, and let
either be installed, obviously marked as conflicts with the other one,
as you'd mentioned.
As promised, here is a page with the list of bugfixes and performance
improvements that HylaFAX+ has over HylaFAX:
http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php
* 1. support for sending and receiving color faxes (without patching
libraries)
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#colorfaxes>
* 2. simplified default faxrcvd, notify, and pollrcvd scripts for
easier customization
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#mailscripts>
* 3. faxq batching support was not needlessly rewritten and includes
greater protection against resource overutilization
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#nofaxqrewrite>
* 4. extended presentation of CallID
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#callidpresentation>
* 5. intelligent real-time format compression conversion (RTFCC)
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#intelligentrtfcc>
* 6. ModemSetOriginCmd, ModemDialCmd, FAXNAME job parameter, and -e
"name" and -u "number" sendfax options
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#modemsetorigincmd>
* 7. enhanced and improved fax image preparation
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#faximage>
* 8. numerous faxmail enhancements
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#faxmail>
* 9. etc/FaxAccounting reliable event hook, particularly for adding
xferfaxlog data to a database
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#faxaccounting>
* 10. xferfaxlog extensions (SUBMIT records and jobinfo field)
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#xferfaxlog>
* 11. inbound faxes can be configured to utilize info files for
automated fax parameters configuration
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#inbounduseofinfo>
* 12. support for taglines using UTF-8 fonts
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#utf8taglines>
* 13. More feature support (i.e. JBIG, JPEG) in the Class 2/2.0/2.1
driver
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#class2featuresupport>
* 14. StaggerCalls feature for faxq
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#staggercalls>
* 15. place non-ready ModemReadyState onto modem status string and add
"exempt" option
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#modemreadystate>
* 16. direct LDAP authentication support (without PAM)
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#ldapauth>
* 17. -nointeractive option for faxsetup and faxaddmodem (like
configure)
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#nointeractive>
* 18. no JobControlWait option
<http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/hylafax-differences.php#jobcontrolwait>
-Chris Coleman
