[sane-devel] backend for Plustek PL-812 // anyboady working on this - who can get me on speed

[Marco Freudenberger]

Hi list ....

I'm urgently looking for a backend driver for a Plustek PL 812 (USB / 
ADF + Flatbed) scanner. Looks like there's (bu-huuuu) currently no 
backend that supports it.


Is anybody out there currently working on a backend or started that at 
some point in time in the past ?


I would be willing to develop // help in developing a backend myself.

I'm a very experienced professional C/C++ Windows (<-- don't laugh !) 
and embedded (vxWorks, CE, no OS) developer, but besides some minor 
things I didn't do much generic Unix development up to now. Also I'm not 
very familar with USB interface programming (while I did some diffrent 
low-level device interfaces via serial / SPI).  <ironic>Sounds like 
perfect premises for me to do something like that, right ?</ironic>  
Well, at least I could learn something and if it works, help the community.

But it would be great if somebody could help me alittle to bring me on 
speed making the first baby steps. I plan to use a USB sniffer 
(hardware) on the PL-812 on Windows to try to reverse engineer the 
protocol. I don't think this will be the worst part. But actually, I 
don't know where to start with developing and have a few questions to 
the more experienced guys out there:

1) the backend-writing doc 
(http://www.sane-project.org/backend-writing.txt) suggest to start with 
a standalone test programm. Is there some kind of a framework or 
existing test programm that can be modified for starting ?
2) the same document suggest (sounds like a good plan!) to extend 
existing backends whenever possible or use existing backends as a 
starting point at least. Any idea which one could be a good starting 
point for the PL-812 ?
3) Is there any further documentation out there to get me on speed ? Or 
books on that subject-matter (also the relevant parts of Unix / USB 
programming that might be needed) ?
4) What is an ususal ammount of time one would plan for developing a 
backend for a certain scanner ?
5) BTW, my environment will be a Kubuntu Linux distribution. Anything 
special about that ?

Thanks for your help! I know, those questions sound like I will never 
make that happen in a reasonable ammount of time, but once I know where 
to start that will change - I'm really a good and incredible quick 
developer, usually  ...


Marco Freudenberger
Darmstadt/Hessen/Germany