History
Sam Leffler, while working at Silicon Graphics (SGI), wrote a fax server for SGI's IRIX servers called FlexFAX and released it to the public in June 1991. Leffler and others worked for several years on FlexFAX, adding new features and porting the software to new platforms. In April 1995 FlexFAX was renamed HylaFAX with the 3.0pl0 release to avoid potential trademark issues.
Following the 4.0pl0 release in September 1996, Leffler began to leave working on the project, which caused development to slow dramatically. He did release version 4.0pl1 in December; however, in February 1997 Sam officially handed maintainership of HylaFAX over to Matthias Apitz, who had previously been known for his maintainership of the SVR4 HylaFAX binary releases and the so-named "HylaFAQ".
Some HylaFAX community members were frustrated that code releases and development work did not increase noticeably after the maintainership transition. Apitz did release HylaFAX 4.0pl2 a year later, in February 1998, and anticipated an eventual 4.0pl3. However, some community members were still unhappy with the slow development pace.
In November 1998, Darren Nickerson, maintainer of the tpc.int network, and Robert Colquhoun led an attempt to revitalize HylaFAX development by the creation of hylafax.org, a central repository for HylaFAX development, downloads, documentation, mailing lists, etc. Colquhoun released a number of "rjc" versions before releasing 4.1beta1 in July 1999 and then 4.1beta2 in August.
In early 2000, newcomer Lee Howard began assisting Nickerson to prepare the next release after development had once again slowed down. A lot of work went into the 4.1beta3 release in February 2001, and in July a non-beta 4.1 was finally released. Since that time releases (now numbered like 4.1.1, 4.1.2, and so forth) have been comparatively regular and the development pace has been relatively steady with releases occurring roughly every six months.
In March 2002, Nickerson started iFAX, Inc., endeavoring to sell and commercialize HylaFAX in particular to enterprise customers. Thus iFAX began selling a proprietary product called HylaFAX Enterprise Edition which supported the proprietary interfacing of Brooktrout fax hardware.
The development pace was still not fast enough for some, in particular Howard. And so after the 4.1.6 release in May 2003 the code repository was branched into a "4.1" legacy branch, to satisfy the conservative elements, and a "4.2" development branch to satisfy Howard. The development branch then began the largest period of code work since before Leffler released 4.0pl0. The Class 1 driver was endowed with ECM capability, fax batching support (sending multiple faxes in one call) was added, extended resolution support began, MMR and JBIG data compressions were supported, and color fax reception was supported all in a relatively short amount of time. This set of developments, and the subsequent stabilization of those features, made HylaFAX not only the best, most feature-rich open-source fax software available, but it also became easily the most feature-rich fax software of any kind that supported average, inexpensive off-the-shelf fax modems.
After many years of disagreements between Howard and Nickerson regarding the direction and pace of the software development, Howard began developing HylaFAX at SourceForge.net in October 2005. That work later became known as HylaFAX+. Version numbers initially added another "dot" (like "4.3.0.11") and then simply changed outright to "5.0.0", "5.0.1", and so forth.
HylaFAX development currently continues both at SourceForge and at hylafax.org. The SourceForge development aims to adopt and release new developments quickly and with little hassle, and so releases there are regular and frequent. The development at hylafax.org continues to be steady with releases occurring less frequently and without adopting all of the features found in HylaFAX+.
Fax, sometimes called telecopying or telefax, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material, normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine, which processes the contents as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using data compression to more quickly transmit areas that are all-white or all-black.
IRIX is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and the industry-standard OpenGL graphics system.
Darwin is the core Unix operating system of macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, visionOS, and bridgeOS. It previously existed as an independent open-source operating system, first released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code derived from NeXTSTEP, FreeBSD, other BSD operating systems, Mach, and other free software projects' code, as well as code developed by Apple.
WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and software application developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003 that features instant messaging, chat rooms, and file browsing/sharing capabilities. The name WASTE is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the novel, W.A.S.T.E. is an underground postal service.
GLX is an extension to the X Window System core protocol providing an interface between OpenGL and the X Window System as well as extensions to OpenGL itself. It enables programs wishing to use OpenGL to do so within a window provided by the X Window System. GLX distinguishes two "states": indirect state and direct state.
Kolab is a free and open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Roundcube web frontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extension and Microsoft Outlook with proprietary Kolab-Connector PlugIns.
Delrina Corporation was a Canadian software company active from 1988 to 1995. The company was best known for WinFax, a software package which enabled computers equipped with fax modems to transmit copies of documents to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. It also sold PerForm and FormFlow, electronic form software. Delrina was acquired by the American software firm Symantec in 1995.
Direct inward dialing (DID), also called direct dial-in (DDI) in Europe and Oceania, is a telecommunication service offered by telephone companies to subscribers who operate private branch exchange (PBX) systems. The feature provides service for multiple telephone numbers over one or more analog or digital physical circuits to the PBX, and transmits the dialed telephone number to the PBX so that a PBX extension is directly accessible for an outside caller, possibly by-passing an auto-attendant.
FirstClass is a client–server groupware, email, online conferencing, voice and fax services, and bulletin-board system for Windows, macOS, and Linux. FirstClass's primary markets are the higher-education and K-12 education sectors, including four of the top ten largest school districts in the United States.
A fax server is a system installed in a local area network (LAN) server that allows computer users whose computers are attached to the LAN to send and receive fax messages.
The Apple USB Modem is a combined 56 kbit/s data modem and 14.4 kbit/s fax external USB modem introduced by Apple Inc. after the internal 56k modem was dropped on the October 12, 2005 iMac G5 revision. While it looks similar, it should not be confused with Apple's optional USB Ethernet Adapter accessory, available for its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Retina range of laptops since 2008.
WinFax is a discontinued Microsoft Windows-based software product developed and published by Delrina designed to let computers equipped with fax-modems communicate directly to stand-alone fax machines, or other similarly equipped computers.
Internet fax, e-fax, or online fax is the use of the internet and internet protocols to send a fax (facsimile), rather than using a standard telephone connection and a fax machine. A distinguishing feature of Internet fax, compared to other Internet communications such as email, is the ability to exchange fax messages with traditional telephone-based fax machines.
Windows Messaging, initially called Microsoft Exchange Client, is an email client that was included with Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0.
T.38 is an ITU recommendation for allowing transmission of fax over IP networks (FoIP) in real time.
Elastix is a unified communications server software that brings together IP PBX, email, IM, faxing and collaboration functionality. It has a Web interface and includes capabilities such as a call center software with predictive dialing.
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information, while the receiver demodulates the signal to recreate the original digital information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded reliably. Modems can be used with almost any means of transmitting analog signals, from light-emitting diodes to radio.
Network Caller ID (NCID) is an open-source client/server network Caller ID (CID) package.
Samuel J Leffler is a computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. Among other projects, he created HylaFAX, LibTIFF, and the FreeBSD Wireless Device Drivers.
Fldigi is a free and open-source program which allows an ordinary computer's sound card to be used as a simple two-way data modem. The software is mostly used by amateur radio operators who connect the microphone and headphone connections of an amateur radio SSB or FM transceiver to the computer's headphone and microphone connections, respectively.
