[sane-devel] network endian issues

[wls at astro.umd.edu]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before or even if I may have reported
it before: has the network protocol been thought out so that network scanning
will work if the backend and frontend machines have different byte order?
It does not appear to be so.

The backend is on a Sparc IPX (i.e. an old slow surplus Sun) running Solaris 8.
The sparc, of course has big-endian byte order.  sane-backend is at version
1.0.5.  The scanner is a Umax 2400s.  The frontend is a Linux Intel PC
(little-endian) running Mandrake 8.0, with sane software also at version 1.0.5.
xsane is at version 0.79.

When a preview is requested with xsane at 12 bits the result looks garbled,
like the bytes have been swapped.  A preview at 8 bits looks fine as does a 12
or 8 bit preview with xsane running on another sparc.  xscanimage didn't allow
a 12 bit preview but a scan at 12 bits (frontend running on Linux Intel
computer) came out looking like its bytes were swapped.

Bill Sebok      Computer Software Manager, Univ. of Maryland, Astronomy
	Internet: wls at astro.umd.edu	URL: http://www.astro.umd.edu/~wls/