Sending post (snailmail) and fax from your file browser
Pixelletter is a German service provider allowing you to send documents (pdf, doc, odt, ppt and some more) by fax and even by post, without leaving your chair, or even having a fax machine. You can use their web interface to upload files, and where to send them to… pretty easy, but still just a bit too bothersome for me, so I wrote an API for their XML interface. This makes sending fax and post from scripts easily accessible (you still need to register an account at Pixelletter, and pay for the service, which is reasonably priced, but not cheap).
To install the Perl module:
perl -MCPAN -e "install WWW::Pixelletter::API"
(It isn’t on CPAN yet – waiting to get the namespace allocated…)
Or get the latest release from github:
git clone git://github.com/robin13/WWW--Pixelletter--API.git cd WWW--Pixelletter--API perl Makefile.PL make make test make install
To actually use the module, you will need a script like send_by_pixelletter.pl (included in the samples folder of the repository). Place this in your ~/bin/ directory.
To add the fax functionality to Nautilus you will have to add a script to the scripts directory:
~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/pixelletter #!/bin/sh gnome-terminal -x ~/bin/send_by_pixelletter.pl $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS
This will cause a terminal to open, and interactively ask if you want to send by post or fax, and get the necessary details.
Beware! If you are sending by post, the first page of the PDF should have the address placed so it will show through a standard DIN A4 envelope address window, otherwise the letter won’t go anywhere!
If you do register an account at Pixelletter, please enter this URL in the “where you heard about it” section!
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