[sane-devel] Firmware info in description files

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On 2006-01-19 16:03, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> I would like to propose to add firmware info to the description
> files.

There are some more tokens that could be added (e.g. chipset) but I'm
a bit conservative here, because the main purpose of the .desc files
is to be used to generate HTML lists and I don't won to make these
lists wider than they currently already are.

I'll think about/try out if the firmware entry can be conditionally
added and how to keep it short. Most scanners don't use a frirmware so
I don't want to see any columns for firmware for these scanners. I
guess that would be more complicated for the scanner search engine.

> It refers to the previous :model and is optional.
> Syntax:
> :firmware "any string like in :comment"

HTML-URL or just the file name on CD.

> If no firmware upload is required, there is no :firmware keyword
> or the value must be the empty string:
> :firmware ""

Just don't use the :firmware token in this case, otherwise sane-desc.c
gets to complicated.

> If no details are known except that firmware upload is required
> :firmware "required"

Ok. But usually at least the name of the firmware should be placed here.
 
> If an URL is known where to download the firmware:
> :firmware "<A HREF=\"http://foo.bar/\">http://foo.bar/</A>"

Use something like this to keep the visible name short:
:firmware "<A HREF=\"http://foo.bar/firmware.usb\">firmware.usb</A>"

> If a file name on the driver CD is known:
> :firmware "cdrom:/foo/bar.fw"

> Since some Suse Linux versions I add :firmware entries to the
> description files when building our "sane" package and I include
> the description files which are used by YaST because YaST must
> know which models require firmware upload so that it can show
> a user information.

Using .desc files for other things than creating the scanner lists is
ok but we should only add data that is also useful for direct display.

maybe it's even better to split the tokens:

:firmware-description "firmware.usb"
:firmware-url "http://some.host.tld/hubba/firmware.usb"

This way we don't depend on HTML and interpreters of .desc files can
select if they want to use the name or the URL or both.

Bye,
  Henning