QFAX.PHONEBOOK(1)

NAME
qfax.phonebook - Qfax phonebook database format

DESCRIPTION
qfax uses a simple "phonebook database" to help keep track of information about people you send faxes to. In its present form it's pretty naive, but as interest dictates, this may change in future versions. Every user of qfax or qsend can have her own "personal phonebook" ( ~/.fax ), which contains information about people and companies she faxes to. This phonebook is the first place qfax and qsend will look to find the recipient. There must at least exist a "master phonebook" somewhere on the system ( fax.db ), which contains information about recipients you feel the entire set of users should be able to access. This database is only accessed if a search of the sender's personal phonebook fails.

PHONEBOOK FORMAT
The formats of both the personal and master phonebooks are identical, and are such that they can be edited and added to using your favourite text editor. Each entry has the following format:

     <company-alias> <company-full-name>
     <company-voice-phone-number>
     <company-fax-phone-number>
     <contact-person-1-alias> <contact-person-1-full-name>
     <contact-person-2-alias> <contact-person-2-full-name>
     ...etc...
     <contact-person-n-alias> <contact-person-n-full-name>
     +

As an example, you might have an entry like this in your fax.db file:

    acme  Acme Industries
    1 999 555 1212
    1 999 555 1234
    wile  Wile E. Coyote, President
    beep  Roadrunner, Vice President
    +

In this way, users could send email to "wile@acme.fax" in order to automatically generate a cover page and fax message for "Wile E. Coyote, President" at "Acme Industries" and have the proper fax number (1 999 555 1234) dialed.

PHONE NUMBER FORMAT
The most universal way to make everyone on both sides of the Atlantic happy is to make NO assumptions about phone number formats. What this means is that you should use whatever dialstring you need in order to dial the recipient, including "1", "011", area code, country code, city code, whatever. Likewise, if a number is local to you, do NOT include any extra digits before the local number. Only include those digits you need to dial. qfax and qsend will ignore any non-digit characters in this dialstring before handing it to the modem, so if the number is "1 999 555 1212", you could also phrase it as "1 (999) 555 1212", or "+1.999.555.1212", and so on. Only the digits matter, so in all of these cases the string "19995551212" would get sent to the modem.

FILES

    /usr/local/bin/qfax    Qfax binary
    /usr/local/bin/qsend   Qsend binary
    /conf/fax/fax.db       Qfax master phonebook
    ~/.fax                 Qfax user phonebook

SEE ALSO
qfax(1), qsend(1)

BUGS
The formatting structure of the phonebook is rather rigid, such that while tabs and spaces are valid whitespace characters, newlines must appear in the specific places indicated. The phonebooks are not sorted at all, as they're produced by hand. Search time will eventually get out of hand as the number of entries becomes large. The text format of the phonebooks is not secure, so anyone can access this information. In future versions this could be modestly encrypted.