[sane-devel] SANE2, time for a decision

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

David, David, Markus, Jens, George
I hope you don't mind that I included you in this thread
which is about a new/enhanced standard to access scanners.
At least I would like to have you informed, see the
"SANE2, time for a decision" thread on
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2007-January/thread.html
For basic information about SANE see
http://www.sane-project.org/intro.html
and for SANE2 see
http://www.sane-project.org/sane2/


On Jan 8 21:49 Jon Chambers wrote (shortened):
> Quite a few manufacturers have written proprietary backends
> and therefore have considered and silently endorsed the
> original SANE spec (for example Dell released a SANE driver
> for the 1815dn MFP).  Maybe they would provide some input
> if we asked them.  Does anyone have any friends amongst the 
> manufacturers that might be emailed?

If a new (or enhanced) standard is to be set up, I recommend
to ask the scanner manufacturers.

>From my communication with various manufacturers (mostly
regarding printing) I know that one gets always friendly
responses and after a few to and fro mails you know if a
manufacturer is really interested or not.

Then I recommend to simply ignore those who are not interested
because only friendly mails without any real progress will only
waste time.

But on the other hand those manufacturers who are interested
are very valuable and very helpful to get a wider range of vision
about the whole stuff, for example:
- How to deal with proprietary stuff?
  E.g. because of third-party license problems even a manufacturer
  may not be able to provide a driver which is completely free.
- How to deal with the scanners in big and fat all-in-one
  printer-scanner-copiers with only direct network access?
  Usually there is no SANE driver needed because those devices
  can produce an image file (e.g. PDF) and send it via email
  but how can such a device be used via a usual scanner frontend?

Obviously this may result further delays until the new standard
is ready to use (which does not mean it must be 100% ready)
but hopefully it makes sure that the new standard will not fail
or may not be accepted by third-parties which would then
make each their own weird obscure incompatible stuff.

I think it would be better to accept some more delay and then
get a really good new standard than an imperfect new standard.

Now some mail contacts which I hope to be useful:

Note that those may be not the exact right person to discuss
scanner specific stuff but they are at least a good point
to start because they know how free software works.

Epson / Epson Avasys:
Olaf Meeuwissen <olaf.meeuwissen at avasys.jp>
Already well known on this list ;-)

HP:
Suffield David <david.suffield at hp.com>
In particular regarding HPLIP http://hplip.sourceforge.net/
the free software for HP printers and HP all-in-one devices
(but not for HP stand-alone scanners).

Kyocera / Kyocera Mita:
David Chamberlin <David.Chamberlin at ktd-kyocera.com>
Markus Brauer <markus.brauer at ktde.de>

Sharp:
Stark Jens <Jens.Stark at seeg.sharp-eu.com>

Ricoh family (Ricoh, Gestetner, Infotec, Lanier, NRG, Savin):
George Liu <george.liu at ussj.ricoh.com>

As far as I know Kyocera, Sharp, and Ricoh family do not provide
small stand-alone desktop scanners but big and fat all-in-one
printer-scanner-copiers (usually with direct network access).


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