converting output to tiffg3: aps2file & empty cat

[Hardy Griech <hardy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

I'm trying to build a filter with the help of apsfilter/aps2file which 
transforms emails (with attachments) to tiffg3 automagically which then 
will be sent to a fax gateway.  The gateway expects tiff input.

After fiddling around I've found a bad problem with 'cat' and 'gs' and 
so on:

- it appeared the generated tiff was invalid,

- the command which invokes gs is:
   gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dBATCH -sstdout=%stderr
   -sDEVICE='tiffg3' -sPAPERSIZE='a4' -r'204x196' -sOutputFile=- - | cat

- simulating this on the command line results in the same output:

   cat /usr/share/ghostscript/7.05/examples/tiger.ps | gs -q -dNOPAUSE
   -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dBATCH -sstdout=%stderr -sDEVICE='tiffg3'
   -sPAPERSIZE='a4' -r'204x196' -sOutputFile=- - | cat > xx2.tif

- unfortunately this output is wrong (invalid tiffg3)!

- the following creates a valid tiffg3:

   cat /usr/share/ghostscript/7.05/examples/tiger.ps | gs -q -dNOPAUSE
   -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dBATCH -sstdout=%stderr -sDEVICE='tiffg3'
   -sPAPERSIZE='a4' -r'204x196' -sOutputFile=- - > xx2.tif

I've installed a newer version of the textutils (now 2.1, before 
2.0-64), tried it with differnt shells - no success :-(

Does anybody has an idea what to check next or how to modify apsfilter 
to skip the empty cat?

Thanks

Hardy