[sane-devel] TWAIN 2.0 targetting Linux

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Oct 12 11:37 david wrote (shortened):
> I think it is not unlikely that in 10 years most scanners
> will be sold with a Linux driver in the box.

I agree.


> So the question becomes what is the best way to help
> manufactures supply a good driver.

Make them aware of
http://www.sane-project.org/manufacturers.html


> We should be looking for a path that allows companies
> a easy transition from closed x86 drivers to open source.

It is not the biggest problem whether the driver is free software
or proprietary software.
If it is free software we can have it by default in the
Linux distributions.
If it is proprietary software we cannot have it by default
in the Linux distributions but this does not mean that
it cannot work well if it is well maintained by the authors
(i.e. by the manufacturers).
A good example of a (partially) proprietary driver software
which is made in compliance to the standards is "Image Scan".
Meanwhile the plain driver "epkowa" is free, see
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2005/09/jsmeix_scanner-setup-100.html
"Free Image Scan driver software for testing:"

The biggest problem is that many manufacturers love to make a
big-and-fat-all-in-one-do-everything-stand-alone-solution
instead of making only what they should make first of all:
The plain driver (i.e. only the backend).

There is no need to make a frontend.
They can make a frontend which is in compliance to SANE
if they like but first of all only a backend is needed.

See for example regarding printers:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2003/11/jsmeix_print-info-for-manufacturers.html
"The Linux support of printers should not be realized by
 implementing an entirely new custom print system. 
 It cannot work if diverse print systems would have to run
 concurrently on the same host when a print server for various
 printers should be set up."


> And it looks like that transition will be via TWAIN 2.0.

If I understand
http://www.sane-project.org/intro.html
correctly ("TWAIN does not separate the user-interface from
the driver") and if this is not changed in TWAIN 2.0,
you may be actually right that the manufacturers who love the
big-and-fat-all-in-one-do-everything-stand-alone-solutions
will prefer TWAIN.

I fear that this may lead to a horrible mess when several
scanners from different manufacturers should be used on the
same computer by different users.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5      Mail: jsmeix at suse.de
90409 Nuernberg, Germany                    WWW: http://www.suse.de/