Sending a Fax via Lazarus/Windows .exe to Ricoh MP305

[RedOctober]

Platform: Lazarus 3.4 (rev lazarus_3_4) FPC 3.2.2 x86_64-win64-win32/win64
Windows Server 2016

Using the mentioned fax machine, I want to use my Lazarus .exe to send a fax number and a document file location to my Ricoh MP305, and get it to send the file as a fax.  Is there a DLL that I have to deal with?  What would the command syntax be?  Any help will be appreciated.  I suspect TProcess will be involved, but I'm looking for insight into what the command would be to send to the MP305.

Please note:  I want to use this specific hardware to send the fax.  I am aware that there are on-line email-to-fax services that do this sort of thing, but the problem with those is:
- I cannot send this file via email, it's private health information
- I need a confirmation of receipt from the fax transmission proving it was sent and received, on my computer for access for 10 years.  Medico-legal requirement.


Apologies if this is the wrong forum to post this.  If there is a correct forum, please let me know and I will delete this and post there.  Thanks in advance.

[jamie]

Fax device should show as a printer in your list.

So use the printer code in lazarus.

[RedOctober]

Hi Jamie, can't do that, bc the Fax function needs a fax number to send to, as well as the file name that needs to be sent.  Unlike a printer, which just needs the file name that you want to print.

The fax hardware is an entirely different "card" inside the machine, with different drivers than the printer side.  Ricoh wants us to use the ancient "app" that comes with the machine, which has a limit on how many fax numbers it can hold.

[rvk]

The fax hardware is an entirely different "card" inside the machine, with different drivers than the printer side.  Ricoh wants us to use the ancient "app" that comes with the machine, which has a limit on how many fax numbers it can hold.

It depends if applications like WinFax can do it.
If not, and you really need the Ricoh application, then this could be proprietary software (via DLL's etc) which would be hard to mimic.

Doesn't the 'ancient' Ricoh app provide a sort of Printer where you can print from any application and get a Fax-dialog?

Otherwise you couldn't even fax anything from an app without first exporting it to... what... PDF? DOC? DOCX? XLS?

[440bx]

Ricoh wants us to use the ancient "app" that comes with the machine, which has a limit on how many fax numbers it can hold.

Is that the only reason you want to write your own program ? i.e, to no longer have that limitation.

[rvk]

Standard Features Detection of Misplaced Documents,
Double Check Destination Address,
Direct SMTP, Fax Forward to Email/Folder,
Internet Fax (T.37), IP Fax (T.38), LAN Fax,
Paperless Fax, LDAP Support, Universal
Send (Simultaneous Fax & Scan), Remote
Fax, Fax Output Timer, Smoothing, User
Codes (1,000), Energy Saver, Image Rotation

http://support.ricoh.com/bb_v1oi/pub_e/oi_view/0001038/0001038933/view/op_guide/unv/0036.htm

Might need some investigation work to find out how they do that.

[RedOctober]

To: rvk
Your question:

Doesn't the 'ancient' Ricoh app provide a sort of Printer where you can print from any application and get a Fax-dialog?

Yes, this is what we are doing now, faxing a .pdf file, via RemoteDekstop, Lazarus .exe that I built, TProcess to call the Ricoh fax interface exe.

To: 440BX:
Your question:

Is that the only reason you want to write your own program ? i.e, to no longer have that limitation.

Yes.  There is a limit of the quantity of fax numbers that the Ricoh app can hold (I forget the exact number).  We need to have more capacity.

Thank you for the link to the Help file.  We have followed those instructions.  Ricoh wants, $4,000 to access their SDK, for me to write a custom app.  I just want to make a single, simple call to their DLL.  By blocking developers, they are limiting their market.  If could all access their DLL, it would be an incentive to buy Ricoh printers.

[Elfrom]

TurboPower Async Professional was released as open source I believe. I am not sure if it has been ported to lazarus, but I do remember it as a very capable pack of tools for serial and fax programming.

[RedOctober]

Thank you Elfrom.  I will look into it.

[rvk]

TurboPower Async Professional was released as open source I believe. I am not sure if it has been ported to lazarus, but I do remember it as a very capable pack of tools for serial and fax programming.

TurboPower uses an old fax card directly. I'm sure it doesn't support a proprietary piece of software that uses faxing over a network.

Otherwise the standard fax software could do it too.
And if that does work you can program that easily (you get a print canvas then).

[440bx]

To: 440BX:
Your question:

Is that the only reason you want to write your own program ? i.e, to no longer have that limitation.

Yes.  There is a limit of the quantity of fax numbers that the Ricoh app can hold (I forget the exact number).  We need to have more capacity.

hmmmmm... without seeing the software it uses, it is not possible to guarantee accuracy but, it's quite likely that a reasonably good reverse engineer could patch that program to increase the number of fax numbers it can handle.

Compared to cracking some sophisticated apps, that sounds like a breakfast croissant.  Barely challenging enough to get busy.

A "cracker in training" would probably do it for fun and a few dollars (certainly way less than $4000.)

Just a thought in case that is an option you're willing to consider.

[rvk]

I'm still wondering if there isn't just a print to fax for Ricoh.

If you search you'll find that it uses ifxapi32.dll.
RICOH PC FAX Generic Driver FAX

Searching for that you find a printer.inf
https://contents.driverguide.com/content.php?id=678253&path=ENGLISH%2FDISK1%2FPRINTER.INF

That leaves me to believe you get a LAN-Fax F3 printer.
The challenge would be to pass it the faxnumber (because usually you would get a popup for that). Passing a faxnumber to MS Fax is easy.

http://support.ricoh.com/bb_v1oi/pub_e/oi/0001064/0001064102/VM0A07507_2/M0A07507_en.pdf

Not sure if ifxapi32.dll and ifxapi64.dll can be easily used in your own program.

[d4eva]

Can you use something like this - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15052862/delphi-to-windows-fax ?

[rvk]

Can you use something like this - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15052862/delphi-to-windows-fax ?

No. As I already said, if Ricoh used the MS Fax services it would have been an (very) easy task. But they are using some proprietary drivers for sending the fax via LAN.

@RedOctober I did find a mention where some Ricoh software needed port 21 (ftp) open to get the status of the fax. Maybe you can use wireshark to find out what traffic is being send over the LAN.

[RedOctober]

All good suggestions.  I did a search for the two DLL files mentioned by rvk.  They don't exist on my server.  This is more involved than I want to get into at the moment, so I may have to succumb to using an online faxing service like eFax's API.  Thank you for the generous help everyone.