Compound document transfer between electronic-mail network and facsimile terminals

The authors present a system for combining the two related yet separated modes of electronic document transfer, namely, electronic-mail (E-mail) and facsimile. Messages prepared at desk-top terminals, supporting compound document creation and editing, and submitted to the E-mail network can thus be received by both interconnected terminals in the common E-mail architecture and by facsimile terminals connected to the public switched telephone networks (PSTN). The latter transmission is achieved by facsimile gateways which connect the two different architectures and perform the necessary protocol conversions.<>