1GSCAN2PDF(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation GSCAN2PDF(1)
2
6 gscan2pdf - A GUI to produce a multipage PDF from a scan. gscan2pdf
7 should work on almost any Linux/BSD machine.
8
10 1. Scan one or several pages in with File/Scan
11 2. Create PDF of selected pages with File/Save PDF
12
14 Scanning is handled with SANE via scanimage. PDF conversion is done by
15 PDF::API2. TIFF export is handled by libtiff (faster and smaller mem‐
16 ory footprint for multipage files).
17
19 gscan2pdf is available on Sourceforge (<https://source‐
20 forge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174140&package_id=199621>).
21 Debian-based
23 If you are using a Debian-based system, just add the following line to
25 your "/etc/apt/sources.list" file:
26 "deb http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/download/debian binary/"
28 If you are you are using Synaptic, then use menu Edit/Reload Package
30 Information, search for gscan2pdf in the package list, and lo and
31 behold, you can install the nice shiny new version automatically.
32 From the command line:
34 "apt-get update"
36 "apt-get install gscan2pdf"
38 If you add my key to your list of trusted keys, then you will no longer
40 get the "not authenticated" warnings:
41 "gpg --keyserver www.keyserver.net --recv-keys 4DD7CC93"
43 "gpg --export --armor 4DD7CC93 ⎪ sudo apt-key add -"
45 If your distribution doesn't have "libgtk2-ex-simple-list-perl", down‐
47 load it from the website and then install it with:
48 "sudo dpkg -i libgtk2-ex-simple-list-perl_0.50-1_all.deb"
50 RPMs
52 Download the rpm from Sourceforge, and then install it with "rpm -i
54 gscan2pdf-version.rpm"
55 From source
57 The source is hosted in the files section of the gscan2pdf project on
59 Sourceforge (<http://sourceforge.net/project/show‐
60 files.php?group_id=174140>).
61 From the repository
63 gscan2pdf uses Mercurial for its Revision Control System. You can
65 browse the tree at <http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/hgweb‐
66 dir.cgi/gscan2pdf/>. You can also download snapshots as .tar.gz, .zip,
67 and .tar.bz2.
68 Mercurial users can clone the complete tree with "hg clone
70 http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/hgwebdir.cgi/gscan2pdf"
71
73 Having downloaded the source either from a Sourceforge file release, or
74 from the Mercurial repository, unpack it if necessary with "tar xvfz
75 gscan2pdf-x.x.x.tar.gz cd gscan2pdf-x.x.x"
76 "perl Makefile.PL", will create the Makefile. There is a "make test",
78 but this is not machine-dependent, and therefore really just for my
79 benefit to make sure I haven't broken the device-dependent options
80 parsing routine.
81 You can install directly from the source with "make install", but
83 building the appropriate package for your distribution should be as
84 straightforward as "make debdist" or "make rpmdist". However, you will
85 additionally need the rpm, devscripts, fakeroot, debhelper and gettext
86 packages.
87
89 The list below looks daunting, but all packages are available from any
90 reasonable up-to-date distribution. If you are using Synaptic, having
91 installed gscan2pdf, locate the gscan2pdf entry in Synaptic, right-
92 click it and you can install them under Recommends.
93 Required
95 libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.4)
96 The GTK+ graphical user interface library.
97 libglib-perl (>= 1.100-1)
99 Perl interface to the GLib and GObject libraries
100 libgtk2-ex-simple-list-perl
102 A simple interface to Gtk2's complex MVC list widget
103 libgtk2-perl (>= 1:1.043-1)
105 Perl interface to the 2.x series of the Gimp Toolkit library
106 liblocale-gettext-perl (>= 1.05)
108 Using libc functions for internationalization in Perl
109 libpdf-api2-perl
111 provides the functions for creating PDF documents in Perl
112 libsane
114 API library for scanners
115 libtiff-tools
117 TIFF manipulation and conversion tools
118 Imagemagick
120 Image manipulation programs
121 perlmagick
123 A perl interface to the libMagick graphics routines
124 sane-utils
126 API library for scanners -- utilities.
127 Optional
129 sane
130 scanner graphical frontends. Only required for the scanadf
131 frontend.
132 libgtk2-ex-podviewer-perl
134 Perl Gtk2 widget for displaying Plain Old Documentation (POD).
135 Not required if you don't need the gscan2pdf documentation
136 (which is anyway repeated on the website).
137 unpaper
139 post-processing tool for scanned pages. See <http://unpa‐
140 per.berlios.de/>.
141 xdg-utils
143 Desktop integration utilities from freedesktop.org. Required
144 for Email as PDF. See <http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/>
145 djvulibre-bin
147 Utilities for the DjVu image format. See <http://djvu.source‐
148 forge.net/>
149 gocr
151 A command line OCR. See <http://jocr.sourceforge.net/>.
152 tesseract
154 A command line OCR. See <http://code.google.com/p/tesser‐
155 act-ocr/>
156
158 There are two mailing lists for gscan2pdf:
159 gscan2pdf-announce
161 A low-traffic list for announcements, mostly of new releases. You
162 can subscribe at <http://lists.source‐
163 forge.net/lists/listinfo/gscan2pdf-announce>
164 gscan2pdf-help
166 General support, questions, etc.. You can subscribe at
167 <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gscan2pdf-help>
168
170 Before reporting bugs, please read the "FAQs" section.
171 Please report any bugs found to the bugs page of the gscan2pdf project
173 on Sourceforge (<https://source‐
174 forge.net/tracker/?group_id=174140&atid=868098>).
175 Please include the output of "gscan2pdf --debug" with any new bug
177 report.
178
180 gscan2pdf has already been partly translated several languages. If you
181 would like to contribute to an existing or new translation, please
182 check out Rosetta: <https://launchpad.net/prod‐
183 ucts/gscan2pdf/trunk/+pots/gscan2pdf>
184
186 File
187 New
189 Clears the page list.
191 Import
193 Imports any format that imagemagick supports. PDFs will have their
195 embedded images extracted and imported one per page.
196 Scan
198 Sets options before scanning via SANE.
200 Device
202 Chooses between available scanners.
204 # Pages
206 Selects the number of pages, or all pages to scan.
208 Source document
210 Selects between single sided or double sides pages.
212 This affects the page numbering. Single sided scans are numbered con‐
214 secutively. Double sided scans are incremented (or decremented, see
215 below) by 2, i.e. 1, 3, 5, etc..
216 Side to scan
218 If double sided is selected above, assuming a non-duplex scanner, i.e.
220 a scanner that cannot automatically scan both sides of a page, this
221 determines whether the page number is incremented or decremented by 2.
222 To scan both sides of three pages, i.e. 6 sides:
224 1. Select:
226 # Pages = 3 (or "all" if your scanner can detect when it is out of
227 paper)
228 Double sided
230 Facing side
232 2. Scans sides 1, 3 & 5.
234 3. Put pile back with scanner ready to scan back of last page.
235 4. Select:
236 # Pages = 3 (or "all" if your scanner can detect when it is out of
237 paper)
238 Double sided
240 Reverse side
242 5. Scans sides 6, 4 & 2.
244 6. gscan2pdf automatically sorts the pages so that they appear in the
245 correct order.
246 Device-dependent options
248 These, naturally, depend on your scanner. They can include
250 Page size.
252 Mode (colour/black & white/greyscale)
253 Resolution (in dpi)
254 Batch-scan
255 Guarantees that a "no documents" condition will be returned after
256 the last scanned page, to prevent endless flatbed scans after a
257 batch scan.
258 Wait-for-button/Button-wait
260 After sending the scan command, wait until the button on the scan‐
261 ner is pressed before actually starting the scan process.
262 Source
264 Selects the document source. Possible options can include Flatbed
265 or ADF. On some scanners, this is the only way of generating an
266 out-of-documents signal.
267 Save PDF
269 Saves the current, selected or all pages as a PDF.
271 Metadata
273 Metadata are information that are not visible when viewing the PDF, but
275 are embedded in the file and so searchable and can be examined, typi‐
276 cally with the "Properties" option of the PDF viewer.
277 The metadata are completely optional.
279 Save image
281 Saves the current, selected or all pages as a TIFF, PNG, JPEG, PNM or
283 GIF.
284 Save DjVu
286 Saves the current, selected or all pages as a DjVu. Currently, only
288 bitonal compression is available. This is best suited to black and
289 white scans and as such, produces better compression than PDF. See
290 <http://www.djvuzone.org/> for more details.
291 Email as PDF
293 Attaches the current, selected or all pages as a PDF to a blank email.
295 This requires xdg-email, which is in the xdg-utils package. If this is
296 not present, the option is ghosted out.
297 Edit
299 Delete
301 Deletes the selected page.
303 Renumber
305 Renumbers the pages from 1..n.
307 Note that the page order can also be changed by drag and drop in the
309 thumbnail view.
310 Select All
312 Selects all pages.
314 Frontend
316 gscan2pdf supports two frontends, scanimage and scanadf. scanadf sup‐
318 port was added when it was realised that scanadf works better with some
319 scanners than scanimage. On Ubuntu Edgy, scanadf is in the sane pack‐
320 age, not, like scanimage, in sane-utils. If scanadf is not present, the
321 option is obviously ghosted out.
322 View
324 Zoom 100%
326 Zooms to 1:1. How this appears depends on the desktop resolution.
328 Zoom to fit
330 Scales the view such that all the page is visible.
332 Zoom in
334 Zoom out
336 Rotate 90 clockwise
338 The rotate options require the package imagemagick and, if this is not
340 present, are ghosted out.
341 Rotate 180
343 Rotate 90 anticlockwise
345 Tools
347 Threshold
349 Changes all pixels darker than the given value to black; all others
351 become white.
352 unpaper
354 unpaper (see <http://unpaper.berlios.de/>) is a utility for cleaning up
356 a scan.
357 OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
359 The gocr or tesseract utilities are used to produce text from an image.
361 There is an OCR output buffer for each page and is embedded both as an
363 annotation (pop-up note) and as plain text behind the scanned image in
364 the PDF produced. This way, Beagle can index (i.e. search) the plain
365 text, and the contents of the annotations can be viewed in Acrobat
366 Reader.
367 In DjVu files, the OCR output buffer is embedded in the hidden text
369 layer. Thus these can also be indexed by Beagle.
370 There is an interesting review of OCR software at <http://ground‐
372 state.ca/ocr>. An important conclusion was that 400dpi is necessary
373 for decent results.
374
376 Why isn't option xyz available in the scan window?
377 Possibly because SANE or your scanner doesn't support it.
379 If an option listed in the output of "scanimage --help" that you would
381 like to use isn't available, send me the output and I will look at
382 implementing it.
383 I've only got an old flatbed scanner with no automatic sheetfeeder. How
385 do I scan a multipage document?
386 If you are lucky, you have an option like Wait-for-button or But‐
388 ton-wait, where the scanner will wait for you to press the scan button
389 on the device before it starts the scan, allowing you to scan multiple
390 pages without touching the computer.
391 Otherwise, you have to set the number of pages to scan to 1 and hit the
393 scan button on the scan window for each page.
394 Why is option xyz ghosted out?
396 Probably because the package required for that option is not installed.
398 Email as PDF requires xdg-email (xdg-utils), scanadf and the rotate
399 options require imagemagick.
400 Why doesn't Email to PDF work with Thunderbird?
402 Because xdg-email doesn't support creating new emails with attachments
404 in Thunderbird.
405 Why can I not scan from the flatbed of my HP scanner?
407 Generally for HP scanners with an ADF, to scan from the flatbed, you
409 should set "# Pages" to "1", and possibly "Batch scan" to "No".
410 When I update gscan2pdf using the Update Manager in Ubuntu, why is the
412 list of changes never displayed?
413 As far as I can tell, this is pulled from changelogs.ubuntu.com, and
415 therefore only the changelogs from official Ubuntu builds are dis‐
416 played.
417
419 v1.0.0
420 Scan profiles.
421 When I've worked out how to do it
422 Correct positioning and size of OCR output behind scan - as soon as
423 tesseract supports outputting the information in a sensible manner.
424 Crop function (As soon as I have finished the Perl bindings for
425 gtkimageview).
426 Print (using Net::Cups).
427 Copier.
428
430 Xsane
431
433 Jeffrey Ratcliffe (ra28145 at users dot sf dot net)
434
436 all the people who have sent patches, translations, bugs and feedback.
437 the GTK2 project for a most excellent graphics toolkit.
438 the Gtk2-Perl project for their superb Perl bindings for GTK2.
439 Sourceforge for hosting the project.
440perl v5.8.8 2008-02-01 GSCAN2PDF(1)