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Book Review
The FAX Modem Sourcebook by Andrew Margolis
Recommended
ISBN: 0-471-95072-6       Publisher: Wiley       Pages: 351 pp+disk       Price: £24-95
Categories:   internals and hardware    
Reviewed by Ruben Galea in C Vu 8-4 (May 1996)
This book gives an in-depth insight into the world of faxes and fax modems providing a guide which allows the reader to acquaint himself with the standards of fax transmission and reception. It allows provides enough material so that one can write fax software. All the relevant aspects of faxes and their transmission are covered; including encoding and decoding of fax images, input and output functions, resolution enhancement via 2D encoding schemes, etc. All these intricate details are complemented by an accompanying PC disc which comes with the book. The programming language used throughout the whole text is ANSI C for portability across multiple platforms. The disc prevents the unnecessary inclusion of pages and pages of program listings. However, occasionally the author provides short code extracts accompanying the text in order to give a much clear picture of what he is trying to explain.

An introductory section of the book outlines a brief history of fax. The fax transmission standards and the respective bodies that implemented them are also given a detailed overview, making this book a complete self-contained resource on faxes. Phase modulation is treated exclusively outlining the fine difference between the baud rate and the bps (bits per second) transmission rate measurements - two different scales of measurement which are frequently and erroneously interchanged by many.

Quoting the author, this book is designed to help you in situations where your fax software

On the whole this is a very good reference on faxes. Some of the code listings given on the disc could be used to supplement your favourite fax software, but note that the text does not include details on controlling devices using the serial port.

As much of the information given can become dated very quickly, addresses of newsgroups, ftp sites and World Wide Web sites are also included at the back of the book, giving a reasonable and reliable source of information for up-to-date reference.

Other Authors with the same surname

Margolis
C: A Software Engineering Approach by P.A. Darnell & P.E. Margolis [Recommended]  (Reviewed Nov 1991)
Personal Computer Dictionary by Philip Margolis  (Reviewed Mar 1997)

Last Update - 13 May 2001.

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