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  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.
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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

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.
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FILES

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

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).
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81       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.
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87

BUGS

89       There are a few known ones, and definitely some unknown ones.
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91       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.
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98       Cancelling the scan
99              This  might  not work correctly, or it might abort the frontend.
100              The former is more likely than the latter.
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102       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.
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TODO

109       Implement non-blocking support
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111       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.
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SEE ALSO

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

122       The  sane-abaton backend was partially written by David Huggins-Daines,
123       based on the sane-apple(5) backend by Milon Firikis.
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127                                  11 Jul 2008                   sane-abaton(5)
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