1sane-apple(5)            SANE Scanner Access Now Easy            sane-apple(5)
2
3
4

NAME

6       sane-apple - SANE backend for Apple flatbed scanners
7

DESCRIPTION

9       The  sane-apple  library  implements  a  SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)
10       backend that provides access to Apple flatbed scanners. At present, the
11       following scanners are supported from this backend:
12
13       --------------- ----- ------------------ ------
14       AppleScanner    4bit  16 Shades of Gray
15       OneScanner      8bit  256 Shades of Gray
16       ColorOneScanner 24bit RGB color          3-pass
17
18
19       If  you own a Apple scanner other than the ones listed above that works
20       with this backend, please let us know by sending  the  scanner's  model
21       name,  SCSI  id,  and  firmware revision to sane-devel@alioth-lists.de‐
22       bian.net.  See http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html  for  de‐
23       tails on how to subscribe to sane-devel.
24
25

DEVICE NAMES

27       This backend expects device names of the form:
28
29              special
30
31       where  special is the path-name for the special device that corresponds
32       to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the special device name must be a
33       generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device.  Under Linux, such a
34       device  name  could  be  /dev/sga  or  /dev/sge,  for   example.    See
35       sane-scsi(5) for details.
36
37

CONFIGURATION

39       The  apple.conf  file is a list of options and device names that corre‐
40       spond to Apple scanners.  Empty lines and lines starting  with  a  hash
41       mark  (#) are ignored.  See sane-scsi(5) on details of what constitutes
42       a valid device name.
43
44       Options come in two flavors: global and positional  ones.   Global  op‐
45       tions  apply  to all devices managed by the backend, whereas positional
46       options apply just to the most recently mentioned  device.   Note  that
47       this means that the order in which the options appear matters!
48
49

SCSI ADAPTER TIPS

51       SCSI scanners are typically delivered with an ISA SCSI adapter.  Unfor‐
52       tunately, that adapter is not worth much  since  it  is  not  interrupt
53       driven.  It is sometimes possible to get the supplied card to work, but
54       without an interrupt line, scanning will put so much load on the system
55       that it becomes almost unusable for other tasks.
56

FILES

58       /etc/sane.d/apple.conf
59              The   backend   configuration  file  (see  also  description  of
60              SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).
61
62       /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-apple.a
63              The static library implementing this backend.
64
65       /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-apple.so
66              The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
67              that support dynamic loading).
68

ENVIRONMENT

70       SANE_CONFIG_DIR
71              This  environment  variable  is  list  of directories where SANE
72              looks for the configuration file.  On  *NIX  systems,  directory
73              names are separated by a colon (`:'), under OS/2 by a semi-colon
74              (`;').  If SANE_CONFIG_DIR is not set, SANE defaults to  search‐
75              ing  the  current  working directory (".") and then /etc/sane.d.
76              If the value of $SANE_CONFIG_DIR ends with the separator charac‐
77              ter,  the  default  directories are searched after the directory
78              list.  For example, setting  SANE_CONFIG_DIR  to  "/tmp/config:"
79              would result in directories tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being
80              searched (in that order).
81
82       SANE_DEBUG_APPLE
83              Controls the debug level.  A value of 255 prints all debug  out‐
84              put.   Smaller values reduce verbosity.  Requires a library com‐
85              piled with debug support.
86
87

CURRENT STATUS

89       The apple backend is now in version 0.3 (Tue Jul 21 1998). Since I only
90       have  the AppleScanner and not the other models (OneScanner, ColorOneS‐
91       canner) I can only develop/test for the AppleScanner effectively.  How‐
92       ever with this release I almost completed the GUI part of all scanners.
93       Most of the functionality is there. At least OneScanner should scan  at
94       the  AppleScanner's  compatible  modes  (LineArt, HalfTone, Gray16). My
95       personal belief is that with a slight touch of debugging the OneScanner
96       could  be actually usable. The ColorOneScanner needs more work. AppleS‐
97       canner is of course almost fully supported.
98
99

MISSING FUNCTIONALITY

101       Currently all three models lack upload/download support.
102
103       AppleScanner
104              Cannot up/download a halftone pattern.
105
106       OneScanner
107              Cannot up/download halftone patterns or calibration vectors.
108
109       ColorOneScanner
110              Cannot up/download halftone patterns, calibration vectors,  cus‐
111              tom Color Correction Tables (CCT) and of course custom gamma ta‐
112              bles.
113
114       Park/UnPark (OneScanner, ColorOneScanner)
115              Some capabilities are missing.
116
117       The above functionalities are missing because I don't have the hardware
118       to experiment on.  Another reason is my lack of understanding as to how
119       or if the SANE API provide means to describe  any  array  type  besides
120       gamma.
121
122
123

UNSUPPORTED FEATURES

125       The  following  "features"  will  never  be supported, at least while I
126       maintain the sane-apple backend.
127
128       NoHome (AppleScanner)
129              The scanner lamp stays on  and  the  carriage  assembly  remains
130              where it stops at the end of the scan. After two minutes, if the
131              scanner does not receive another SCAN command, the lamp goes off
132              and the carriage returns to the home position.
133
134       Compression (AppleScanner)
135              The  Scanner  can  compress data with CCITT Group III one dimen‐
136              sional algorithm (fax) and the Skip White Line algorithm.
137
138       Multiple Windows (AppleScanner)
139              AppleScanner may support multiple windows. It would  be  a  cool
140              feature and a challenge for me to code if it could intermix dif‐
141              ferent options for different windows (scan areas). This  way  it
142              could  scan  a document in LineArt mode but the figures in it in
143              Gray and at a different resolution.  Unfortunately this  is  im‐
144              possible.
145
146       Scan Direction (OneScanner)
147              It controls the scan direction. (?)
148
149       Status/Reset Button (OneScanner)
150              This  option controls the status of the button on the OneScanner
151              model. You can also reset the button status by software.
152
153

BUGS

155       SANE backend bugs are divided in two classes.  We  have  GUI  bugs  and
156       scanner specific bugs.
157
158       We  know  we  have a GUI bug when a parameter is not showing up when it
159       should (active) or vice versa. Finding out which parameters are  active
160       across  various Apple modes and models from the documentation ftp://ft‐
161       pdev.info.apple.com/devworld/Technical_Documentation/Peripherals_Docu‐
162       mentation/ is an interesting exercise. I may have missed some dependen‐
163       cies. For example of the threshold parameter the  Apple  Scanners  Pro‐
164       gramming  Guide  says nothing. I had to assume it is valid only in Lin‐
165       eArt mode.
166
167       Scanner specific bugs are mostly due to mandatory round-offs  in  order
168       to scan. In the documentation in one place states that the width of the
169       scan area should be a byte multiple. In another place it says that  the
170       width of the scan area should be an even byte multiple. Go figure...
171
172       Other  sources of bugs are due to scsi communication, scsi connects and
173       disconnects. However the classical bugs are still there. So you may en‐
174       counter  buffer overruns, null pointers, memory corruption and SANE API
175       violations.
176
177       SIGSEGV on SliceBars
178              When you try to modify the scan area from the slice bar you have
179              a  nice  little  cute core dump. I don't know why. If you select
180              the scan area from the preview window or by hand typing the num‐
181              bers everything is fine. The SIGSEGV happens deep in gtk library
182              (gdk). I really cannot debug it.
183
184       Options too much
185              It is possible, especially  for  the  ColorOneScanner,  for  the
186              backend's options panel to extend beyond your screen. It happens
187              with mine and I am running my X Server at 1024x768. What  can  I
188              say? Try smaller fonts in the X server, or virtual screens.
189
190       Weird SCSI behaviour
191              I am quoting David Myers Here...
192
193              >> OS: FreeBSD 2.2.6
194              >> CC: egcs-1.02
195              Just  wanted to follow up on this...  I recently changed my SCSI
196              card from the Adaptec  2940UW  to  a  dual-channel  Symbios  786
197              chipset.   When I started up SANE with your driver, I managed to
198              scan line art drawings okay, but Gray16 scans led to a stream of
199              SCSI  error  messages  on the console, ultimately hanging with a
200              message saying the scanner wasn't releasing the SCSI bus.   This
201              may be that the Symbios is simply less tolerant of ancient hard‐
202              ware, or may be bugs in your driver or in SANE itself...
203
204

DEBUG

206       If you encounter a  GUI  bug  please  set  the  environmental  variable
207       SANE_DEBUG_APPLE  to 255 and rerun the exact sequence of keystrokes and
208       menu selections to reproduce it. Then send me a report with the log at‐
209       tached.
210
211       If you have an Apple Macintosh with the AppleScanners driver installed,
212       reporting to me which options are grayed out (inactive) in  what  modes
213       would be very helpful.
214
215       If  you  want  to  offer some help but you don't have a scanner, or you
216       don't have the model you would like to help with, or you are a SANE de‐
217       veloper and you just want to take a look at how the apple backend looks
218       like, goto to apple.h and #define the NEUTRALIZE_BACKEND macro. You can
219       select  the  scanner model through the APPLE_MODEL_SELECT macro. Avail‐
220       able options are APPLESCANNER, ONESCANNER, and COLORONESCANNER.
221
222       If you encounter a SCSI bus error or trimmed  and/or  displaced  images
223       please set the environment variable SANE_DEBUG_SANEI_SCSI to 255 before
224       sending me the report.
225
226

TODO

228       Non Blocking Support
229              Make  sane-apple  a  non  blocking  backend.  Properly   support
230              sane_set_io_mode() and sane_get_select_fd()
231
232       Scan   Make scanning possible for all models in all supported modes.
233
234       Add other missing functionality
235
236

SEE ALSO

238       sane(7), sane-scsi(5)
239
240

AUTHOR

242       The  sane-apple  backend was written not entirely from scratch by Milon
243       Firikis. It is mostly based on the sane-mustek(5)  backend  from  David
244       Mosberger and Andreas Czechanowski
245
246
247
248                                  11 Jul 2008                    sane-apple(5)
Impressum