sane-abaton

sane-abaton(5) SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-abaton(5)

NAME

   sane-abaton - SANE backend for Abaton flatbed scanners

DESCRIPTION

   The  sane-abaton  library  implements  a  SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that provides access to Abaton flatbed scanners. At present, only the Scan 300/GS (8bit, 256 levels of
   gray) is fully supported, due to the absence of programming information.  The Scan 300/S (black and white) is recognized, but support for it is untested.

   If you own a Abaton scanner other than the ones listed above that works with this backend, or if you own an Abaton scanner that  does  not  work  with  this  backend,  please  contact
   sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net  with  the  model  number, so that arrangements can be made to include support for it. Have a look at http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html
   concerning subscription to sane-devel.

   Abaton is out of business, and these scanners are not supported by Everex (the parent company of Abaton), nor is there any programming information to be found.  This driver is  there
   fore based on information obtained by running Abaton's scanning desk accessory under MacsBug and tracing the MacOS SCSI Manager calls it made during image acquisition.

   However,  the protocol is very similar to, though not compatible with, the one used by the Apple scanners, therefore, if this backend is ever extended to support the other Abaton mod
   els (they also made a color flatbed scanner), it may be possible to fill in some "missing pieces" from the (quite detailed) Apple scanner documentation.

DEVICE NAMES

   This backend expects device names of the form:

          special

   Where special is the path-name for the special device that corresponds to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the special device name must be a generic SCSI device or a symlink to such
   a device.  Under Linux, such a device name takes a format such as /dev/sga or /dev/sg0, for example.  See sane-scsi(5) for details.

CONFIGURATION

   The contents of the abaton.conf file is a list of device names that correspond to Abaton scanners.  Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored.  See  sane-scsi(5)
   on details of what constitutes a valid device name.

FILES

   /etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
          The backend configuration file (see also description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-abaton.a
          The static library implementing this backend.

   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-abaton.so
          The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading).

ENVIRONMENT

   SANE_CONFIG_DIR
          This  environment  variable  specifies  the list of directories that may contain the configuration file.  On *NIX systems, the directories are separated by a colon (`:'), under
          OS/2, they are separated by a semi-colon (`;').  If this variable is not set, the configuration file is searched in two default directories: first, the current  working  direc
          tory  (".")  and then in /etc/sane.d.  If the value of the environment variable ends with the directory separator character, then the default directories are searched after the
          explicitly specified directories.  For example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would result in directories tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being searched (in this or
          der).

   SANE_DEBUG_ABATON
          If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend.  E.g., a value of 255 requests all debug output  to
          be printed.  Smaller levels reduce verbosity.

BUGS

   There are a few known ones, and definitely some unknown ones.

   Scan area miscalculations
          For  the  sake  of  programmer  efficiency, this backend handles all measurements in millimetres, and floors (rather than rounds) values to avoid possible damage to the scanner
          mechanism.  Therefore, it may not be possible to scan to the extreme right or bottom edges of the page.

   Cancelling the scan
          This might not work correctly, or it might abort the frontend.  The former is more likely than the latter.

   If you have found something that you think is a bug, please attempt to recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON environment variable set to 255, and send a report detailing  the  condi
   tions surrounding the bug to sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.

TODO

   Implement non-blocking support

   Finish reverse-engineering the MacOS driver
          This will allow me to add support for other models with reasonable confidence that it will work, as well as to fully exploit the information returned by the INQUIRY command.

SEE ALSO

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

AUTHOR

   The sane-abaton backend was partially written by David Huggins-Daines, based on the sane-apple(5) backend by Milon Firikis.

                                                                                      11 Jul 2008                                                                           sane-abaton(5)