Release notes for AsterFax version 1.0 release candidate 1

AsterFax provides an Email to Fax gateway for the transmission of faxes using Asterisk.

Asterisk is an Open Source PBX (or PABX) integrating PSTN telephone lines and VOIP into a single solution, providing all of the functionality of a high end PBX; and best of all its free!
AsterFax builds on the services provided by Asterisk to provide a full fledged email based Fax Gateway.

What that means is that with AsterFax and Asterisk you can send faxes from your desktop using your standard email client without have to install any software on your desktop.

AsterFax can translate a normal email message into a fax message. You simply enter the destination phone number in the 'To' address, compose your email message and click send. Its that easy.

For more formal correspondence AsterFax also supports a growing number of file formats such as PDF, Tiff, Postscript, MS-Word and OpenOffice Writer. You can either attach the file to your email message or for applications such as MS-Word and OpenOffice you can fax directly from the applications by using the 'Send Email' option. The resulting email is sent as a fax message.


Beta 9 provides a number of bug fixes and feature enhancements

Fix unsupported compression error


In beta 8 any attachment would cause an unsupported compression error to occur. The Java Advanced Imaging API supports a very specific set of compression schemes. The AsterFax code was attempting to accommodate the preferred compression scheme for the document. The compression is now fixed to a specific scheme.

Fax header and footer appears on every page


In beta 8 the fax header and footer was not printed on every page. The position of the text was also incorrect and some truncation of letters was occuring. In this release the header and footer are printed on every page and the positioning and formatting have been improved.

Added asterfaxkiller.sh


A new script has been added to kill AsterFax when run with nohup. killasterfax.sh sends a QUIT command to AsterFax on a configured port allowing AsterFax to shutdown gracefully. The port is configured in AsterFax.xml in Settings/KillPort. The default port is 5252.

Inbound fax support


AsterFax can now handle inbound faxes. In this release a dial plan must be configured to answer the incoming call and to invoke the RxFax application. When RxFax is done it sends a FaxReceived event and AsterFax taskes over from there. This may change in future in that no dial plan should be required and AsterFax should answer the call directly.

Addition of fax handlers


Fax handlers can be attached to the TxFax and RxFax processes. A fax handler can be used to archive faxes or e-mail alerts to recipients for example. Configure fax handler in AsterFax.xml in Asterisk/RxFax and Asterisk/TxFax. Currently there are two fax handlers that ship with AsterFax: au.com.noojee.asterfax.handler.DefaultFaxHandler, which does nothing at all; and au.com.noojee.asterfax.handler.XmlRoutingHandler.

XmlRoutingHandler is configured through an XML file to archive the fax message to the file system and send the message as an e-mail attachment. A sample configuration file ships with AsterFax as config/FaxRoutes.xml. It uses the caller ID (when receiving faxes) and the remote station ID (when sending faxes) to lookup a possible location to archive the file to and the e-mail address to send the message to. A manager route is provided as a default, should no specific route be found in the configuration then the manager route is used.

Multiple handlers can be configured for incoming and outgoing faxes. They are invoked in the order they are found in the configuration file.

Patch for app_txfax.c enhanced


The install.sh script now determines the 'kind' of spandsp library that is installed and copies the relevant source file. The script currently assumes Asterisk 1.2 is installed. There are variations in the source for 1.0 and 1.1 installations. These will be added if need be in a later release.