sane-abaton - SANE backend for Abaton flatbed scanners


DESCRIPTION

       The  sane-abaton library implements a SANE (Scanner Access
       Now Easy) backend that provides access to  Abaton  flatbed
       scanners. At present, only the Scan 300/GS (8bit, 256 lev­
       els of gray) is fully supported, due  to  the  absence  of
       programming information.  The Scan 300/S (black and white)
       is recognized, but support for it is untested.

       If you own a Abaton scanner other  than  the  ones  listed
       above  that works with this backend, or if you own an Aba­
       ton scanner that does not work with this  backend,  please
       contact  sane-devel@mostang.com  with the model number, so
       that arrangements can be made to include support for it.

       Abaton is out of business, and these scanners are not sup­
       ported  by  Everex  (the parent company of Abaton), nor is
       there any  programming  information  to  be  found.   This
       driver  is therefore based on information obtained by run­
       ning Abaton's scanning desk accessory  under  MacsBug  and
       tracing  the MacOS SCSI Manager calls it made during image
       acquisition.

       However, the protocol is very similar to, though not  com­
       patible  with,  the one used by the Apple scanners, there­
       fore, if this backend is  ever  extended  to  support  the
       other  Abaton models (they also made a color flatbed scan­
       ner), it may be possible to fill in some "missing  pieces"
       from the (quite detailed) Apple scanner documentation.


DEVICE NAMES

       This backend expects device names of the form:

              special

       Where special is the path-name for the special device that
       corresponds to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the spe­
       cial  device  name must be a generic SCSI device or a sym­
       link to such a device.  Under Linux, such  a  device  name
       takes  a format such as /dev/sga or /dev/sg0, for example.
       See sane-scsi(5) for details.


CONFIGURATION

       The contents of the abaton.conf file is a list  of  device
       names that correspond to Abaton scanners.  Empty lines and
       lines starting with a hash  mark  (#)  are  ignored.   See
       sane-scsi(5) on details of what constitutes a valid device
       name.

       /etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
              The backend configuration file (see  also  descrip­
              tion of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

       /usr/lib/sane/libsane-abaton.a
              The static library implementing this backend.

       /usr/lib/sane/libsane-abaton.so
              The  shared library implementing this backend (pre­
              sent on systems that support dynamic loading).


ENVIRONMENT

       SANE_CONFIG_DIR
              This environment variable  specifies  the  list  of
              directories  that  may  contain  the  configuration
              file.  Under UNIX, the directories are separated by
              a  colon (`:'), under OS/2, they are separated by a
              semi-colon (`;').  If this variable is not set, the
              configuration  file  is  searched  in  two  default
              directories: first, the current  working  directory
              (".") and then in /etc/sane.d.  If the value of the
              environment variable ends with the directory  sepa­
              rator  character,  then the default directories are
              searched after the  explicitly  specified  directo­
              ries.   For  example,  setting  SANE_CONFIG_DIR  to
              "/tmp/config:"   would   result   in    directories
              "tmp/config", ".", and "/etc/sane.d" being searched
              (in this order).

       SANE_DEBUG_ABATON
              If the library  was  compiled  with  debug  support
              enabled,  this  environment  variable  controls the
              debug level for this backend.  E.g., a value of 255
              requests  all  debug output to be printed.  Smaller
              levels reduce verbosity.


BUGS

       There are a few known ones, and  definitely  some  unknown
       ones.

       Scan area miscalculations
              For the sake of programmer efficiency, this backend
              handles all measurements in millimetres, and floors
              (rather  than rounds) values to avoid possible dam­
              age to the scanner mechanism.   Therefore,  it  may
              not  be  possible  to  scan to the extreme right or
              bottom edges of the page.

       Cancelling the scan
              This might not work correctly, or  it  might  abort
              the  frontend.   The former is more likely than the
              latter.

       please  attempt  to recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON
       environment variable set to 255, and send a report detail­
       ing    the    conditions    surrounding    the    bug   to
       sane-devel@mostang.com.


TODO

       Implement non-blocking support

       Finish reverse-engineering the MacOS driver
              This will allow me to add support for other  models
              with  reasonable  confidence  that it will work, as
              well as to fully exploit the  information  returned
              by the INQUIRY command.


SEE ALSO

       sane(7), sane-scsi(5), scanimage(1)


AUTHOR

       The  sane-abaton  backend  was  partially written by David
       Huggins-Daines, based on the sane-apple backend  by  Milon
       Firikis.


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