[sane-devel] Epson 4490 in Debian

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Olaf Meeuwissen <olaf.meeuwissen at avasys.jp> writes:

> 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.

Eh, that's "I would not quite call ..."

>>> 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