1GSCAN2PDF(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation GSCAN2PDF(1)
2
6 gscan2pdf - A GUI to produce PDFs or DjVus from scanned documents
7
9 1. Scan one or several pages in with File/Scan
10 2. Create PDF of selected pages with File/Save
11
13 gscan2pdf has the following command-line options:
14 --device=<device> Specifies the device to use, instead of getting the
16 list of devices from via the SANE API. This can be useful if the
17 scanner is on a remote computer which is not broadcasting its
18 existence.
19 --help Displays this help page and exits.
20 --log=<log file> Specifies a file to store logging messages.
21 --(debug|info|warn|error|fatal) Defines the log level. If a log file is
22 specified, this defaults to 'debug', otherwise 'warn'.
23 --version Displays the program version and exits.
24 Scanning is handled with SANE via scanimage. PDF conversion is done by
26 PDF::API2. TIFF export is handled by libtiff (faster and smaller
27 memory footprint for multipage files).
28
30 gscan2pdf is available on Sourceforge
31 (<https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174140&package_id=199621>).
32 Debian-based
34 If you are using Debian, you should find that sid has the latest
35 version already packaged.
36 If you are using a Ubuntu-based system, just add the following line to
38 your "/etc/apt/sources.list" file:
39 "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jeffreyratcliffe/ubuntu <release> main"
41 "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jeffreyratcliffe/ubuntu <release>
43 main"
44 where "<release>" is the version of Ubuntu you are using.
46 If you are you are using Synaptic, then use menu Edit/Reload Package
48 Information, search for gscan2pdf in the package list, and lo and
49 behold, you can install the nice shiny new version automatically.
50 From the command line:
52 "apt-get update"
54 "apt-get install gscan2pdf"
56 If you add my key to your list of trusted keys, then you will no longer
58 get the "not authenticated" warnings. Fetch the key:
59 "gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 4DD7CC93"
61 Then add it to the apt keyring:
63 "gpg --export --armor 4DD7CC93 | sudo apt-key add -"
65 RPMs
67 Download the rpm from Sourceforge, and then install it with "rpm -i
68 gscan2pdf-version.rpm"
69 From source
71 The source is hosted in the files section of the gscan2pdf project on
72 Sourceforge
73 (<http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174140>).
74 From the repository
76 gscan2pdf uses Git for its Revision Control System. You can browse the
77 tree at http://gscan2pdf.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=gscan2pdf
78 Git users can clone the complete tree with "git clone
80 git://gscan2pdf.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/gscan2pdf/gscan2pdf"
81
83 Having downloaded the source either from a Sourceforge file release, or
84 from the Git repository, unpack it if necessary with "tar xvfz
85 gscan2pdf-x.x.x.tar.gz cd gscan2pdf-x.x.x"
86 "perl Makefile.PL", will create the Makefile. There is a "make test",
88 but this is not machine-dependent, and therefore really just for my
89 benefit to make sure I haven't broken the device-dependent options
90 parsing routine.
91 You can install directly from the source with "make install", but
93 building the appropriate package for your distribution should be as
94 straightforward as "make debdist" or "make rpmdist". However, you will
95 additionally need the rpm, devscripts, fakeroot, debhelper and gettext
96 packages.
97
99 The list below looks daunting, but all packages are available from any
100 reasonable up-to-date distribution. If you are using Synaptic, having
101 installed gscan2pdf, locate the gscan2pdf entry in Synaptic, right-
102 click it and you can install them under Recommends. Note also that the
103 library names given below are the Debian/Ubuntu ones. Those
104 distributions using RPM typically use perl(module) where Debian has
105 libmodule-perl.
106 Required
108 libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.4)
109 The GTK+ graphical user interface library.
110 libglib-perl (>= 1.100-1)
112 Perl interface to the GLib and GObject libraries
113 libgtk2-perl (>= 1:1.043-1)
115 Perl interface to the 2.x series of the Gimp Toolkit library
116 libgtk2-imageview-perl
118 Perl bindings to the gtkimageview widget. See
119 <http://trac.bjourne.webfactional.com/>
120 libgtk2-ex-simple-list-perl
122 A simple interface to Gtk2's complex MVC list widget
123 liblocale-gettext-perl (>= 1.05)
125 Using libc functions for internationalization in Perl
126 libpdf-api2-perl
128 provides the functions for creating PDF documents in Perl
129 libsane
131 API library for scanners
132 libsane-perl
134 Perl bindings for libsane.
135 libset-intspan-perl
137 manages sets of integers
138 libtiff-tools
140 TIFF manipulation and conversion tools
141 Imagemagick
143 Image manipulation programs
144 perlmagick
146 A perl interface to the libMagick graphics routines
147 sane-utils
149 API library for scanners -- utilities.
150 Optional
152 sane
153 scanner graphical frontends. Only required for the scanadf
154 frontend.
155 libgtk2-ex-podviewer-perl
157 Perl Gtk2 widget for displaying Plain Old Documentation (POD).
158 Not required if you don't need the gscan2pdf documentation
159 (which is anyway repeated on the website).
160 unpaper
162 post-processing tool for scanned pages. See
163 <http://unpaper.berlios.de/>.
164 xdg-utils
166 Desktop integration utilities from freedesktop.org. Required
167 for Email as PDF. See <http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/>
168 djvulibre-bin
170 Utilities for the DjVu image format. See
171 <http://djvu.sourceforge.net/>
172 gocr
174 A command line OCR. See <http://jocr.sourceforge.net/>.
175 tesseract
177 A command line OCR. See http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
178 <http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/>
179 ocropus
181 A command line OCR. See <http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/>
182 cuneiform
184 A command line OCR. See http://launchpad.net/cuneiform-linux
185 <http://launchpad.net/cuneiform-linux>
186
188 There are two mailing lists for gscan2pdf:
189 gscan2pdf-announce
191 A low-traffic list for announcements, mostly of new releases. You
192 can subscribe at
193 http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gscan2pdf-announce
194 <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gscan2pdf-announce>
195 gscan2pdf-help
197 General support, questions, etc.. You can subscribe at
198 http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gscan2pdf-help
199 <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gscan2pdf-help>
200
202 Before reporting bugs, please read the "FAQs" section.
203 Please report any bugs found, preferably against the Debian
205 package[1][2]. You do not need to be a Debian user, or set up an
206 account to do this.
207 1. http://packages.debian.org/sid/gscan2pdf
209 2. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
210 Alternatively, there is a bug tracker for the gscan2pdf project on
212 Sourceforge
213 (<https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=174140&atid=868098>).
214 Please include the output of "gscan2pdf --debug" with any new bug
216 report.
217
219 gscan2pdf has already been partly translated several languages. If you
220 would like to contribute to an existing or new translation, please
221 check out Rosetta: <https://translations.launchpad.net/gscan2pdf>
222 Note that the translations for the scanner options are taken directly
224 from sane-backends. If you would like to contribute to these, you can
225 do so either at contact the sane-devel mailing list
226 (sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org) and have a look at the po/
227 directory in the source code http://www.sane-project.org/cvs.html
228 <http://www.sane-project.org/cvs.html>.
229 Alternatively, Ubuntu has its own translation project. For the 9.04
231 release, the translations are available at
232 https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/sane-backends/+pots/sane-backends
233 <https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/sane-
234 backends/+pots/sane-backends>
235
237 File
238 New
239 Clears the page list.
241 Open
243 Opens any format that imagemagick supports. PDFs will have their
245 embedded images extracted and imported one per page.
246 Scan
248 Sets options before scanning via SANE.
250 Device
252 Chooses between available scanners.
254 # Pages
256 Selects the number of pages, or all pages to scan.
258 Source document
260 Selects between single sided or double sides pages.
262 This affects the page numbering. Single sided scans are numbered
264 consecutively. Double sided scans are incremented (or decremented, see
265 below) by 2, i.e. 1, 3, 5, etc..
266 Side to scan
268 If double sided is selected above, assuming a non-duplex scanner, i.e.
270 a scanner that cannot automatically scan both sides of a page, this
271 determines whether the page number is incremented or decremented by 2.
272 To scan both sides of three pages, i.e. 6 sides:
274 1. Select:
276 # Pages = 3 (or "all" if your scanner can detect when it is out of
277 paper)
278 Double sided
280 Facing side
282 2. Scans sides 1, 3 & 5.
284 3. Put pile back with scanner ready to scan back of last page.
285 4. Select:
286 # Pages = 3 (or "all" if your scanner can detect when it is out of
287 paper)
288 Double sided
290 Reverse side
292 5. Scans sides 6, 4 & 2.
294 6. gscan2pdf automatically sorts the pages so that they appear in the
295 correct order.
296 Device-dependent options
298 These, naturally, depend on your scanner. They can include
300 Page size.
302 Mode (colour/black & white/greyscale)
303 Resolution (in PPI)
304 Batch-scan
305 Guarantees that a "no documents" condition will be returned after
306 the last scanned page, to prevent endless flatbed scans after a
307 batch scan.
308 Wait-for-button/Button-wait
310 After sending the scan command, wait until the button on the
311 scanner is pressed before actually starting the scan process.
312 Source
314 Selects the document source. Possible options can include Flatbed
315 or ADF. On some scanners, this is the only way of generating an
316 out-of-documents signal.
317 Save
319 Saves the selected or all pages as a PDF, DjVu, TIFF, PNG, JPEG, PNM or
321 GIF.
322 PDF Metadata
324 Metadata are information that are not visible when viewing the PDF, but
326 are embedded in the file and so searchable and can be examined,
327 typically with the "Properties" option of the PDF viewer.
328 The metadata are completely optional, but can also be used to generate
330 the filename see preferences for details.
331 DjVu
333 Both black and white, and colour images produce better compression than
335 PDF. See <http://www.djvuzone.org/> for more details.
336 Email as PDF
338 Attaches the selected or all pages as a PDF to a blank email. This
340 requires xdg-email, which is in the xdg-utils package. If this is not
341 present, the option is ghosted out.
342 Print
344 Prints the selected or all pages.
346 Compress temporary files
348 If your temporary ($TMPDIR) directory is getting full, this function
350 can be useful - compressing all images at LZW-compressed TIFFs. These
351 require much less space than the PNM files that are typically produced
352 by SANE or by importing a PDF.
353 Edit
355 Delete
356 Deletes the selected page.
358 Renumber
360 Renumbers the pages from 1..n.
362 Note that the page order can also be changed by drag and drop in the
364 thumbnail view.
365 Select
367 The select menus can be used to select, all, even, odd, blank, dark or
369 modified pages. Selecting blank or dark pages runs imagemagick to make
370 the decision. Selecting modified pages selects those which have
371 modified by threshold, unsharp, etc., since the last OCR run was made.
372 Preferences
374 The preferences menu item allows the control of the default behviour of
376 various functions. Most of these are self-explanatory.
377 Frontend
379 gscan2pdf supports two frontends, scanimage and scanadf. scanadf
381 support was added when it was realised that scanadf works better than
382 scanimage with some scanners. On Debian-based systems, scanadf is in
383 the sane package, not, like scanimage, in sane-utils. If scanadf is not
384 present, the option is obviously ghosted out.
385 In 0.9.27, Perl bindings for SANE were introduced and two further
387 frontends, scanimage-perl and scanadf-perl (scanimage and scanadf
388 transliterated from C into Perl) were added.
389 Default filename for PDF files
391 The following variables are available, which are replaced by the
393 corresponding metadata:
394 %a author
396 %t title
397 %y document's year
398 %Y today's year
399 %m document's month
400 %M today's month
401 %d document's day
402 %D today's day
403 View
405 Zoom 100%
406 Zooms to 1:1. How this appears depends on the desktop resolution.
408 Zoom to fit
410 Scales the view such that all the page is visible.
412 Zoom in
414 Zoom out
416 Rotate 90 clockwise
418 The rotate options require the package imagemagick and, if this is not
420 present, are ghosted out.
421 Rotate 180
423 Rotate 90 anticlockwise
425 Tools
427 Threshold
428 Changes all pixels darker than the given value to black; all others
430 become white.
431 Unsharp mask
433 The unsharp option sharpens an image. The image is convolved with a
435 Gaussian operator of the given radius and standard deviation (sigma).
436 For reasonable results, radius should be larger than sigma. Use a
437 radius of 0 to have the method select a suitable radius.
438 Crop
440 unpaper
442 unpaper (see <http://unpaper.berlios.de/>) is a utility for cleaning up
444 a scan.
445 OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
447 The gocr, tesseract, ocropus or cuneiform utilities are used to produce
449 text from an image.
450 There is an OCR output buffer for each page and is embedded as plain
452 text behind the scanned image in the PDF produced. This way, Beagle can
453 index (i.e. search) the plain text.
454 In DjVu files, the OCR output buffer is embedded in the hidden text
456 layer. Thus these can also be indexed by Beagle.
457 There is an interesting review of OCR software at
459 <http://web.archive.org/web/20080529012847/http://groundstate.ca/ocr>.
460 An important conclusion was that 400ppi is necessary for decent
461 results.
462 Up to v2.04, the only way to tell which languages were available to
464 tesseract was to look for the language files. Therefore, gscan2pdf
465 checks the path returned by:
466 tesseract '' '' -l ''
468 If there are no language files in the above location, then gscan2pdf
470 assumes that tesseract v1.0 is installed, which had no language files.
471 Variables for user-defined tools
473 The following variables are available:
475 %i input filename
477 %o output filename
478 %r resolution
479 An image can be modified in-place by just specifying %i.
481
483 Why isn't option xyz available in the scan window?
484 Possibly because SANE or your scanner doesn't support it.
485 If an option listed in the output of "scanimage --help" that you would
487 like to use isn't available, send me the output and I will look at
488 implementing it.
489 I've only got an old flatbed scanner with no automatic sheetfeeder. How do
491 I scan a multipage document?
492 If you are lucky, you have an option like Wait-for-button or Button-
493 wait, where the scanner will wait for you to press the scan button on
494 the device before it starts the scan, allowing you to scan multiple
495 pages without touching the computer.
496 Otherwise, you have to set the number of pages to scan to 1 and hit the
498 scan button on the scan window for each page.
499 Why is option xyz ghosted out?
501 Probably because the package required for that option is not installed.
502 Email as PDF requires xdg-email (xdg-utils), unpaper and the rotate
503 options require imagemagick.
504 Why can I not scan from the flatbed of my HP scanner?
506 Generally for HP scanners with an ADF, to scan from the flatbed, you
507 should set "# Pages" to "1", and possibly "Batch scan" to "No".
508 When I update gscan2pdf using the Update Manager in Ubuntu, why is the list
510 of changes never displayed?
511 As far as I can tell, this is pulled from changelogs.ubuntu.com, and
512 therefore only the changelogs from official Ubuntu builds are
513 displayed.
514 Why can gscan2pdf not find my scanner?
516 If your scanner is not connected directly to the machine on which you
517 are running gscan2pdf and you have not installed the SANE daemon,
518 saned, gscan2pdf cannot automatically find it. In this case, you can
519 specify the scanner device on the command line:
520 "gscan2pdf --device <device">
522
524 Xsane
525 http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/
526
528 Jeffrey Ratcliffe (ra28145 at users dot sf dot net)
529
531 · all the people who have sent patches, translations, bugs and
532 feedback.
533 · the GTK2 project for a most excellent graphics toolkit.
535 · the Gtk2-Perl project for their superb Perl bindings for GTK2.
537 · The SANE project for scanner access
539 · BjA~Xrn Lindqvist for the gtkimageview widget
541 · Sourceforge for hosting the project.
543perl v5.12.4 2011-09-28 GSCAN2PDF(1)