More tips on faxing directly from your personal computer

More tips on faxing directly from your personal computer

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): It is always sad to bid farewell to a good
friend if you don't know how long it will be until you can see
each other again.

That is why I felt so desolate as I stared at the closed
stores in Computer City in Glodok Plaza last week. They were dark
and there was very little, if anything, left in their store
display and on their shelves.

Computer City was the barometer for the level of computer
technology adoption in Indonesia. If you couldn't find the piece
of hardware you wanted in Computer City, chances were you
wouldn't be able to find it anywhere in Indonesia. Quiet and bare
Computer City today no longer has the high-tech ardor that we
still felt only a few months back.

So, when I learned that Hewlett-Packard Indonesia was
organizing a special event in Glodok Plaza beginning last Friday
-- and starting today in Pondok Indah Mall -- it gave me a
somewhat soothing feeling. At least one major vendor showed it
still cared for its dealers who were in trouble.

Hopefully, these HP Discount Parties will be able to bring
back some life to this place, albeit only for a very short time.
I was informed that HP dealers would be selling printers and
Vectra PCs at discounted prices (this may be a good chance to
find bargains if you really cannot put off buying new hardware).

Signature

With the activities in Computer City screeching to a halt and
HP trying to change the mood a little, we should continue
optimizing the use of whatever we have and cut expenses wherever
we can. Faxing directly from the computer is, as I wrote in last
week's article in this column, something that most of us must
learn, particularly if we already have a modem attached to our
computer.

Last Monday, right after reading that piece, a good friend of
mine, Jim Tilley from Bank Papan, e-mailed me. He shared with me
how he added his signature in his faxes. Back in 1991, when he
didn't have access to a scanner, he asked somebody to fax him a
sheet of paper that had his own signature. This fax was received
directly into his computer as an image file (remember that your
fax/modem can also receive faxes). The saved file was then
cropped. Everything outside the signature was cut off, and he has
pasted this signature in all his faxes ever since.

Today, with scanners everywhere, we shouldn't have much
difficulty getting our signature in a file. Just create a couple
of your John Hancocks on a clean piece of paper so that you can
choose the one that meets your demanding specifications.

Then, place the paper on the scanner and load the scanning
program. In the accompanying picture, see the zoomed image of a
signature. All you have to do is select it with the borders as
close as possible to its edges. The smaller the area, the smaller
the size of the file and the faster you can paste it on your
document. Don't scan the signature as a line drawing, though.
Some of your pen strokes may be too vague for the scanner to
capture. Scan it as a black and white photo so that you have the
entire signature scanned.

My seven-year-old HP ScanJet IIC has only a limited number of
file formats into which it can save a scanned image. Usually I
save it in the .TIF format. If you use Winword and your scanner
can save in the .WMF format, it is better to choose this one. By
the way, if you want to use the signature in your e-mails as
well, you will have to convert the file into a .GIF or .JPG
format.

What you have to do now is compose your fax in Winword, Ami
Pro, WordPerfect or any other word processing program, and insert
the signature file under "Sincerely yours,". In Winword, for
example, it is a good idea to save the file in its Clipart
subdirectory. All you to do then is click on Insert, then Picture
and From file, and then you select the name of your signature
file.

However, since the signature will be a raster image, the
faxing time will be longer. It is be advisable that you not put
your signature unless it is really necessary to do so. Internal
office memos, in general, do not really require your signature.

More tips

Last week I told you that you could fax a document from inside
your word processor by printing to WinFax Pro. If you have closed
the document and the program already, you can also fax it
directly from Windows explorer.

What you have to do is start Windows Explorer, go to the
subdirectory where you keep your files (in Winword it's usually
My Documents), and select with the mouse the particular document
you want to fax. Then you click on it with the right mouse
button. As usual, a menu will appear. You click on Sent to and
choose WinFax Pro. This will call up the fax program.

As the fax/modem is also capable of receiving faxes and
storing them as computer files, you can also fill in a form that
has been faxed to you and fax it back without having to print it
out. To do this, you have to open the stored fax file in Fax
Viewer, found under the Tools menu item in WinFax Pro. You have
to enable the Annotate feature in the View menu item in Fax
Viewer, and then you can start filling in the form. When you're
done, you can save it back and fax it to the sender.

Furthermore, if you want to convert a fax file, which is
essentially an image file, into a text file, you can run the
optical character recognition (OCR) utility that comes with
WinFax Pro. Again, you have to open the file in Fax Viewer and
run the utility, which is found under the Tools menu item.

Finally, you can save more on your phone bills by delaying the
fax transmission to a later time when the phone rate is lower,
for instance, at midnight. In WinFax Pro, this is very easy to
do. After you specify the recipient fax number, click on the
Delivery button. In the dialog box that will appear, you'll be
able to set the time you want WinFax Pro to start faxing.