[sane-devel] Epson 4490 in Debian

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Julien BLACHE <jb at jblache.org> writes:

> Johannes Meixner <jsmeix at suse.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>>> What I have done
>>> now is suggesting to the upstream developers to make two packages, one
>>> with the frontend and one with the backend, to be more distro-friendly.
>>> I have no answer yet, lets see what they say.
>>
>> Be prepared to be very patient - I asked this since 14 Jul 2004,
>> see the shortened mail at the bottom :-(
>
> And the answer will probably be "it would confuse our users even
> more", but then, so does using japanese model names all over the
> place. I'm a bit fed up with trying to remember which japanese model
> name matches which non-japanese model name :/

Same here, that's why I've started pointers in our epkowa.desc.

> (It's painful enough with all those rebranded scanners, so if
> manufacturers like Epson could stick to having only one model name...)

Model names for EPSON devices vary by geographic region :-(

>> I like to emphasize that it is not Olaf Meeuwissen who is to blame
>> that there is almost no progress here.
>
> Indeed, Olaf does as much as humanly possible to improve the
> situation, but even sending patches to him doesn't help as he doesn't
> have the time to merge them due to tight deadlines and schedule (he's
> sending patches to himself to queue them until management allocates a
> time frame to merge them in, IIRC).

Thanks for not blaming me ;-) and your summary is mostly correct.
I've not been sending myself many patches lately.  Hacking on iscan
for work as well as in my own time is not always that much fun and at
the pace patches made it in ...

> And management is, well, management, aggravated by the fact that this
> is a japanese company, the development is split between two entities
> and includes IP from some other entities, with horrible communication
> between the parties involved.
>
> Basically, this is the situation as I get it, correct me if I'm wrong :)

I would quite call the communication horrible, but it probably leaves
to be desired and things get "lost in translation".
# My Japanese in not even halfway decent ...  I just hobble along.

>> Perhaps it helps the Epson Avasys decision makers to make the right
>> decisions when all (or at least almost all) Linux distributors
>> demand the same thing.
>
> It'd be nice if something could be organised between Epson's
> management, SANE developers (Henning ? khk ? Oliver Schwartz ?) and
> some key distributions to discuss the situation and see what can be
> done to improve it as much as possible. (obviously I'd have no problem
> attending such a meeting, as long as I am available on that day and
> can make it to the meeting).

If something like that would materialise, I suggest we also drag in
the CUPS and ghostscript packagers to get the EPSON AVASYS printer
drivers on the right track as well.
# Johannes Meixner has already contacted us, Till Kamppeter just did.

Hope this helps,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen                          EPSON AVASYS Corporation, SE1
FSF Associate Member #1962           sign up at http://member.fsf.org/
GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97  976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90
Penguin's lib!       -- I hack, therefore I am --               LPIC-2