1sane-abaton(5) SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-abaton(5)
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6 sane-abaton - SANE backend for Abaton flatbed scanners
7
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.
14 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.
21 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.
27 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.
33
36 This backend expects device names of the form:
37 special
39 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.
45
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.
51
54 /etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
55 The backend configuration file (see also description of
56 SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).
57 /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-abaton.a
59 The static library implementing this backend.
60 /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-abaton.so
62 The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
63 that support dynamic loading).
64
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).
79 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.
85
88 There are a few known ones, and definitely some unknown ones.
89 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.
96 Cancelling the scan
98 This might not work correctly, or it might abort the frontend.
99 The former is more likely than the latter.
100 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.
105
108 Implement non-blocking support
109 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.
114
117 sane(7), sane-scsi(5), scanimage(1)
118
121 The sane-abaton backend was partially written by David Huggins-Daines,
122 based on the sane-apple backend by Milon Firikis.
123 11 Jul 2008 sane-abaton(5)