1sane-abaton(5)           SANE Scanner Access Now Easy           sane-abaton(5)
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NAME

6       sane-abaton - SANE backend for Abaton flatbed scanners
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DESCRIPTION

9       The  sane-abaton  library  implements  a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)
10       backend that provides access to Abaton flatbed  scanners.  At  present,
11       only the Scan 300/GS (8bit, 256 levels of gray) is fully supported, due
12       to the absence of programming information.  The Scan 300/S  (black  and
13       white) is recognized, but support for it is untested.
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15       If you own a Abaton scanner other than the ones listed above that works
16       with this backend, or if you own an Abaton scanner that does  not  work
17       with  this  backend,  please contact sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net
18       with the model number, so that arrangements can be made to include sup‐
19       port   for   it.   Have  a  look  at  http://www.sane-project.org/mail
20       ing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel.
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22       Abaton is out of business, and these  scanners  are  not  supported  by
23       Everex  (the  parent  company  of Abaton), nor is there any programming
24       information to be found.  This driver is therefore based on information
25       obtained  by running Abaton's scanning desk accessory under MacsBug and
26       tracing the MacOS SCSI Manager calls it made during image acquisition.
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28       However, the protocol is very similar to, though not  compatible  with,
29       the  one used by the Apple scanners, therefore, if this backend is ever
30       extended to support the other Abaton models (they  also  made  a  color
31       flatbed  scanner),  it may be possible to fill in some "missing pieces"
32       from the (quite detailed) Apple scanner documentation.
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DEVICE NAMES

36       This backend expects device names of the form:
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38              special
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40       Where special is the path-name for the special device that  corresponds
41       to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the special device name must be a
42       generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device.  Under Linux, such a
43       device  name  takes a format such as /dev/sga or /dev/sg0, for example.
44       See sane-scsi(5) for details.
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CONFIGURATION

47       The contents of the abaton.conf file is a list  of  device  names  that
48       correspond  to  Abaton scanners.  Empty lines and lines starting with a
49       hash mark (#) are ignored.  See sane-scsi(5) on details of what consti‐
50       tutes a valid device name.
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FILES

54       /etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
55              The   backend   configuration  file  (see  also  description  of
56              SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).
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58       /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-abaton.a
59              The static library implementing this backend.
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61       /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-abaton.so
62              The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
63              that support dynamic loading).
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ENVIRONMENT

66       SANE_CONFIG_DIR
67              This environment variable specifies the list of directories that
68              may contain the configuration file.  Under UNIX, the directories
69              are  separated  by a colon (`:'), under OS/2, they are separated
70              by a semi-colon (`;').  If this variable is not set, the config‐
71              uration  file is searched in two default directories: first, the
72              current working directory (".") and then in /etc/sane.d.  If the
73              value  of the environment variable ends with the directory sepa‐
74              rator character, then the default directories are searched after
75              the  explicitly  specified  directories.   For  example, setting
76              SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would  result  in  directories
77              "tmp/config",  ".",  and  "/etc/sane.d"  being searched (in this
78              order).
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80       SANE_DEBUG_ABATON
81              If the library was compiled with  debug  support  enabled,  this
82              environment  variable controls the debug level for this backend.
83              E.g., a value of 255 requests all debug output  to  be  printed.
84              Smaller levels reduce verbosity.
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86

BUGS

88       There are a few known ones, and definitely some unknown ones.
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90       Scan area miscalculations
91              For  the sake of programmer efficiency, this backend handles all
92              measurements in millimetres, and  floors  (rather  than  rounds)
93              values  to  avoid  possible  damage  to  the  scanner mechanism.
94              Therefore, it may not be possible to scan to the  extreme  right
95              or bottom edges of the page.
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97       Cancelling the scan
98              This  might  not work correctly, or it might abort the frontend.
99              The former is more likely than the latter.
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101       If you have found something that you think is a bug, please attempt  to
102       recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON environment variable set to 255,
103       and send a report detailing  the  conditions  surrounding  the  bug  to
104       sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.
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TODO

108       Implement non-blocking support
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110       Finish reverse-engineering the MacOS driver
111              This  will allow me to add support for other models with reason‐
112              able confidence that it will work, as well as to  fully  exploit
113              the information returned by the INQUIRY command.
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SEE ALSO

117       sane(7), sane-scsi(5), scanimage(1)
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AUTHOR

121       The  sane-abaton backend was partially written by David Huggins-Daines,
122       based on the sane-apple backend by Milon Firikis.
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126                                  11 Jul 2008                   sane-abaton(5)
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