hp-sendfax issues + snmp mibs & port 9220 net-fax protocol specs?

Please see https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/1039343 for more details

It details how there are issues with hp-sendfax

1) No support for queing of faxes PERIOD (especially by non-interactive processes).
  - hplip does Not tracking error's / temporary& permanent failures
     * temporary/perm failures marked as "done" via snmp - can this be worked around? firmware bug?
     * This writes of any further consideration of setting up a spooling system. If you can't hear the fax tone and your are not in the same room as the printer there is really no point to proceed in setting up fax queuing.
  - No feature to allowing spooling of faxes lodged non-interactively.
      * Cups filter only used for rendering.
      * Only one hp-sendfax process can be executed at a time.
      * a pre-cursor system to spool jobs into hp-senfax is required.
      * dbus is used for locking to prevent duplicate processes running.
      * 'hp-sendfax -n' should wait for a lock to be released on fax device if another process talking to the SAME fax URI?
      * best solution - a rewrite:
         + hp-sendfax's replacement should be called by the hp cups filter to solve concurrency issues
         + hp-sendfax's GUI moved into hp-statusmonitor to ask for unconfigured fax job's phone numbers. the hp-fax.ppd (like it used to be pre 0.93!)
         + use dbus for IPC
         + should be updated to allow all fax options to be submitted in the postscript print job.
         + notification destiation can be included in fax job options (email/hp status/jabber whatever)
- hp-sendfax leaves cruft in /tmp
  - Even if points above were not an issue, needs virtual Xwindows Environment with Xvfb/Xvnc hp-status-notifier & dbus to work in it's current configuration. Too much, keep the requirement for dbus, drop the need for X.

2) The most elegant solution is to write an interface for hylafax to support HP devices. I'm trying to do a proof of concept to see how hard this would be, or nag HP engineers to contribute it into a new project to increase open-source users use of HP's fax/printers.
  - To do this I need specs for the protocol used between hp-sendfax and the device. Preferably from a firmware developer at HP.
  - Full SNMP mib's at least for my printer which doesn't seem to be online.

I'll look over hplip source to see what is possible, but I'm not prepared to do any work until we can asertain fax transmission success or failure through SNMP. The implementation of sending faxes over the network in hplip isn't complete, so this should really be bumped along to the HP Engineers.

Cheers,

Luke

HiLED ISD/Global Technical Marketing