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 Ev‐
23 erex (the parent company of Abaton), nor is there any programming in‐
24 formation 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
48 The contents of the abaton.conf file is a list of device names that
49 correspond to Abaton scanners. Empty lines and lines starting with a
50 hash mark (#) are ignored. See sane-scsi(5) on details of what consti‐
51 tutes a valid device name.
52
55 /etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
56 The backend configuration file (see also description of
57 SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).
58 /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-abaton.a
60 The static library implementing this backend.
61 /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-abaton.so
63 The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
64 that support dynamic loading).
65
67 SANE_CONFIG_DIR
68 This environment variable specifies the list of directories that
69 may contain the configuration file. On *NIX systems, the direc‐
70 tories are separated by a colon (`:'), under OS/2, they are sep‐
71 arated by a semi-colon (`;'). If this variable is not set, the
72 configuration file is searched in two default directories:
73 first, the current working directory (".") and then in
74 /etc/sane.d. If the value of the environment variable ends with
75 the directory separator character, then the default directories
76 are searched after the explicitly specified directories. For
77 example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would result
78 in directories tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being searched (in
79 this order).
80 SANE_DEBUG_ABATON
82 If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this en‐
83 vironment variable controls the debug level for this backend.
84 E.g., a value of 255 requests all debug output to be printed.
85 Smaller levels reduce verbosity.
86
89 There are a few known ones, and definitely some unknown ones.
90 Scan area miscalculations
92 For the sake of programmer efficiency, this backend handles all
93 measurements in millimetres, and floors (rather than rounds)
94 values to avoid possible damage to the scanner mechanism.
95 Therefore, it may not be possible to scan to the extreme right
96 or bottom edges of the page.
97 Cancelling the scan
99 This might not work correctly, or it might abort the frontend.
100 The former is more likely than the latter.
101 If you have found something that you think is a bug, please attempt to
103 recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON environment variable set to 255,
104 and send a report detailing the conditions surrounding the bug to
105 sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.
106
109 Implement non-blocking support
110 Finish reverse-engineering the MacOS driver
112 This will allow me to add support for other models with reason‐
113 able confidence that it will work, as well as to fully exploit
114 the information returned by the INQUIRY command.
115
118 sane(7), sane-scsi(5), scanimage(1)
119
122 The sane-abaton backend was partially written by David Huggins-Daines,
123 based on the sane-apple(5) backend by Milon Firikis.
124 11 Jul 2008 sane-abaton(5)