[Gimp-user] GIMP and fax

[Neil Youngman <temp301303 youngman org uk>]

I'm looking for an efficient command line method to add header text into 
fax documents.

This can be done with ImageMagick, but it's painfully slow and uses far 
too much memory if it's a large fax (tens or hundreds of pages). I'm 
wondering if GIMP script mode might help. My immediate impression is 
that GIMP is not a good tool for the job.

The problems I see are:

1. The FAQ says that the image type for TIFF must be RGB, but fax is 
monochrome.
2. The faxg3 and tiff functions to load and save do not offer an obvious 
way to handle 1 page at a time and the memory requirement to load 
hundreds of pages would be excessive.
3. Although group 3 compression is supported there is no obvious way to 
save an image as black and white.

I'm not familiar with GIMP, so it may be that I just haven't found the 
right functions. Can it handle monochrome, multi-page fax and do so 
efficiently?

Neil Youngman