Manual Pages for UNIX Operating System command usage for man sane-abaton

SANE Scanner Access Now Easy                       sane-abaton(5)



NAME
     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 levels
     of  gray) is fully supported, due to the absence of program-
     ming 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 Abaton
     scanner that does not work with this backend, please contact
     sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org with the model number, so
     that arrangements can be made to  include  support  for  it.
     Have    a   look   at   http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-
     lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel.

     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  running
     Abaton's scanning desk accessory under MacsBug  and  tracing
     the  MacOS  SCSI Manager calls it made during image acquisi-
     tion.

     However, the protocol is very similar to, though not  compa-
     tible  with,  the one used by the Apple scanners, therefore,
     if this backend is ever extended to support the other Abaton
     models  (they  also made a color flatbed scanner), 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  symlink
     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.



sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 19 Nov 1998                    1






SANE Scanner Access Now Easy                       sane-abaton(5)



FILES
     /etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
          The backend configuration file (see also description 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  (present
          on systems that support dynamic loading).

ENVIRONMENT
     SANE_CONFIG_DIR
          This environment variable specifies the list of  direc-
          tories  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 separator character, then the default  direc-
          tories  are  searched  after  the  explicitly specified
          directories.  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 damage to
          the scanner mechanism.  Therefore, it may not be possi-
          ble 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.




sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 19 Nov 1998                    2






SANE Scanner Access Now Easy                       sane-abaton(5)



     If you have found something that you think is a bug,  please
     attempt  to  recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON environ-
     ment variable set to 255, and send a  report  detailing  the
     conditions      surrounding     the     bug     to     sane-
     devel@lists.alioth.debian.org.


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.

ATTRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:

     _________________________________________________________
    |   ATTRIBUTE TYPE   |           ATTRIBUTE VALUE         |
    |____________________|____________________________________|_
    | Availability       |  image/scanner/xsane/sane-backends|
    |____________________|____________________________________|_
    | Interface Stability|  Uncommitted                      |
    |____________________|___________________________________|

NOTES
     Source for SANE is available on http://opensolaris.org.















sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 19 Nov 1998                    3