1sane-apple(5) SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-apple(5)
2
6 sane-apple - SANE backend for Apple flatbed scanners
7
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 --------------- ----- ------------------ ------
14 AppleScanner 4bit 16 Shades of Gray
15 OneScanner 8bit 256 Shades of Gray
16 ColorOneScanner 24bit RGB color 3-pass
17 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-
22 devel@lists.alioth.debian.org. See http://www.sane-project.org/mail‐
23 ing-lists.html for details on how to subscribe to sane-devel.
24
27 This backend expects device names of the form:
28 special
30 Where special is either the path-name for the special device that cor‐
32 responds to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the special device name
33 must be a generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device. Under
34 Linux, such a device name could be /dev/sga or /dev/sge, for example.
35 See sane-scsi(5) for details.
36
38 The apple.conf file is a list of options and device names that corre‐
39 spond to Apple scanners. Empty lines and lines starting with a hash
40 mark (#) are ignored. See sane-scsi(5) on details of what constitutes
41 a valid device name.
42 Options come in two flavors: global and positional ones. Global
44 options apply to all devices managed by the backend, whereas positional
45 options apply just to the most recently mentioned device. Note that
46 this means that the order in which the options appear matters!
47
50 SCSI scanners are typically delivered with an ISA SCSI adapter. Unfor‐
51 tunately, that adapter is not worth much since it is not interrupt
52 driven. It is sometimes possible to get the supplied card to work, but
53 without an interrupt line, scanning will put so much load on the system
54 that it becomes almost unusable for other tasks.
55
57 /etc/sane.d/apple.conf
58 The backend configuration file (see also description of
59 SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).
60 /usr/lib*/sane/libsane-apple.a
62 The static library implementing this backend.
63 /usr/lib*/sane/libsane-apple.so
65 The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
66 that support dynamic loading).
67
69 SANE_CONFIG_DIR
70 This environment variable is list of directories where SANE
71 looks for the configuration file. Under UNIX directory names
72 are separated by a colon (`:'), under OS/2 by a semi-colon
73 (`;'). If SANE_CONFIG_DIR is not set, SANE defaults to search‐
74 ing the current working directory (".") and then /etc/sane.d.
75 If the value of $SANE_CONFIG_DIR ends with the separator charac‐
76 ter, the default directories are searched after the directory
77 list. For example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:"
78 would result in directories "tmp/config", ".", and "/etc/sane.d"
79 being searched (in that order).
80 SANE_DEBUG_APPLE
82 Controls the debug level. A value of 255 prints all debug out‐
83 put. Smaller values reduce verbosity. Requires a library com‐
84 piled with debug support.
85
88 The apple backend is now in version 0.3 (Tue Jul 21 1998). Since I only
89 have the AppleScanner and not the other models (OneScanner, ColorOneS‐
90 canner) I can only develop/test for the AppleScanner effectively. How‐
91 ever with this release I almost completed the gui part of all scanners.
92 Most of the functionality is there. At least OneScanner should scan at
93 the AppleScanner's compatible modes (LineArt, HalfTone, Gray16). My
94 personal belief is that with a slight touch of debugging the OneScanner
95 could be actually usable. The ColorOneScanner needs more work. AppleS‐
96 canner is of course almost fully supported.
97
100 Currently all three models lack upload/download support.
101 AppleScanner
103 Cannot up/download a halftone pattern.
104 OneScanner
106 Cannot up/download halftone patterns or calibration vectors.
107 ColorOneScanner
109 Cannot up/download halftone patterns, calibration vectors, cus‐
110 tom Color Correction Tables (CCT) and of course custom gamma
111 tables.
112 Park/UnPark (OneScanner, ColorOneScanner)
114 The above functionalities are missing because I don't have the hardware
116 to experiment on. Another reason is my lack of understanding as to how
117 or if the SANE API provide means to describe any array type besides
118 gamma.
119
123 The following "features" will never be supported, at least while I
124 maintain the sane-apple backend.
125 NoHome (AppleScanner)
127 The scanner lamp stays on and the carriage assembly remains
128 where it stops at the end of the scan. After two minutes, if the
129 scanner does not receive another SCAN command, the lamp goes off
130 and the carriage returns to the home position.
131 Compression (AppleScanner)
133 The Scanner can compress data with CCITT Group III one dimen‐
134 sional algorithm (fax) and the Skip White Line algorithm.
135 Multiple Windows (AppleScanner)
137 AppleScanner may support multiple windows. It would be a cool
138 feature and a challenge for me to code if it could intermix dif‐
139 ferent options for different windows (scan areas). This way it
140 could scan a document in LineArt mode but the figures in it in
141 Gray and at a different resolution. Unfortunately this is
142 impossible.
143 Scan Direction (OneScanner)
145 It controls the scan direction. (?)
146 Status/Reset Button (OneScanner)
148 This option controls the status of the button on the OneScanner
149 model. You can also reset the button status by software.
150
153 SANE backend bugs are divided in two classes. We have GUI bugs and
154 scanner specific bugs.
155 We know we have a GUI bug when a parameter is not showing up when it
157 should (active) or vice versa. Finding out which parameters are active
158 across various Apple modes and models from the documentation
159 ftp://ftpdev.info.apple.com/devworld/Technical_Documentation/Peripher‐
160 als_Documentation/ is an interesting exercise. I may have missed some
161 dependencies. For example of the threshold parameter the Apple Scanners
162 Programming Guide says nothing. I had to assume it is valid only in
163 LineArt mode.
164 Scanner specific bugs are mostly due to mandatory round-offs in order
166 to scan. In the documentation in one place states that the width of the
167 scan area should be a byte multiple. In another place it says that the
168 width of the scan area should be an even byte multiple. Go figure...
169 Other sources of bugs are due to scsi communication, scsi connects and
171 disconnects. However the classical bugs are still there. So you may
172 encounter buffer overruns, null pointers, memory corruption and SANE
173 API violations.
174 SIGSEGV on SliceBars
176 When you try to modify the scan area from the slice bar you have
177 a nice little cute core dump. I don't know why. If you select
178 the scan area from the preview window or by hand typing the num‐
179 bers everything is fine. The SIGSEGV happens deep in gtk library
180 (gdk). I really cannot debug it.
181 Options too much
183 It is possible, especially for the ColorOneScanner, for the
184 backend's options panel to extend beyond your screen. It happens
185 with mine and I am running my X Server at 1024x768. What can I
186 say? Try smaller fonts in the X server, or virtual screens.
187 Weird SCSI behaviour
189 I am quoting David Myers Here...
190 >> OS: FreeBSD 2.2.6
192 >> CC: egcs-1.02
193 Just wanted to follow up on this... I recently changed my SCSI
194 card from the Adaptec 2940UW to a dual-channel Symbios 786
195 chipset. When I started up SANE with your driver, I managed to
196 scan line art drawings okay, but Gray16 scans led to a stream of
197 SCSI error messages on the console, ultimately hanging with a
198 message saying the scanner wasn't releasing the SCSI bus. This
199 may be that the Symbios is simply less tolerant of ancient hard‐
200 ware, or may be bugs in your driver or in SANE itself...
201
204 If you encounter a GUI bug please set the environmental variable
205 SANE_DEBUG_APPLE to 255 and rerun the exact sequence of keystrokes and
206 menu selections to reproduce it. Then send me a report with the log
207 attached.
208 If you have an Apple Macintosh with the AppleScanners driver installed,
210 reporting to me which options are grayed out (inactive) in what modes
211 would be very helpful.
212 If you want to offer some help but you don't have a scanner, or you
214 don't have the model you would like to help with, or you are a SANE
215 developer and you just want to take a look at how the apple backend
216 looks like, goto to apple.h and #define the NEUTRALIZE_BACKEND macro.
217 You can select the scanner model through the APPLE_MODEL_SELECT macro.
218 Available options are APPLESCANNER, ONESCANNER, COLORONESCANNER.
219 If you encounter a SCSI bus error or trimmed and/or displaced images
221 please set the environment variable SANE_DEBUG_SANEI_SCSI to 255 before
222 sending me the report.
223
226 Non Blocking Support
227 Make sane-apple a non blocking backend. Properly support
228 sane_set_io_mode and sane_get_select_fd
229 Scan Make scanning possible for all models in all supported modes.
231 Missing Functionality
233
236 sane(7), sane-scsi(5)
237
240 The sane-apple backend was written not entirely from scratch by Milon
241 Firikis. It is mostly based on the mustek backend from David Mosberger
242 and Andreas Czechanowski
243sane-backends 1.0.18 13 May 1998 sane-apple(5)