SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-canon_pp(5)
NAME
sane-canon_pp - SANE backend for Canon CanoScan Parallel
Port flatbed scanners
DESCRIPTION
The sane-canon_pp library implements a SANE (Scanner Access
Now Easy) backend that provides access to the following
Canon flatbed scanners:
CanoScan FB320P
CanoScan FB620P
CanoScan FB330P
CanoScan FB630P
CanoScan N340P
CanoScan N640P
CanoScan N640P ex
No USB scanners are supported and there are no plans to sup-
port them in the future. Other projects are working on sup-
port for USB scanners. See the PROJECTS file for more
detail. The FB310P and FB610P are re-badged Avision
scanners which use a different command set, so are unlikely
to be supported by this backend in the future.
IMPORTANT: this is alpha code. While we have made every
effort to make it as reliable as possible, it will not
always work as expected. Feedback is still appreciated.
Please send any bug reports to the maintainers as listed on
the web page (listed in SEE ALSO below).
DEVICE NAMES
This backend expects device names of the form presented by
libieee1284. These names are highly dependent on operating
system and version.
On Linux 2.4 kernels this will be of the form parport0 or
older (2.2 and before) kernels may produce names like 0x378
(the base address of your port) or simply 0 depending on
your module configuration. Check the contents of
/proc/parport if it exists. If you don't want to specify a
default port (or don't know its name), the backend should be
able to detect which port your scanner is on.
CONFIGURATION
The contents of the canon_pp.conf file is a list of options
for the driver to use. Empty lines and lines starting with
a hash mark (#) are ignored.
The supported options are currently ieee1284, calibrate,
init_mode, and force_nibble
sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 1 October 2002 1
SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-canon_pp(5)
Option ieee1284 port-name defines which port to use. The
format of port-name is OS dependent, based on the names
presented by libieee1284. Please only have one of these
lines, or all but one will be ignored.
Option calibrate cal-file [port-name] defines which calibra-
tion file to use on a per-port basis. If you only have one
parport, the port-name argument may be omitted - but be
careful as this will cause problems on multi-scanner sys-
tems. You may have as many of these lines as you like, as
long as each has a unique port name. The tilde (`~') char-
acter is acceptable and will be expanded to the value of the
HOME environment.
Option init_mode [portname] defines
which initialisation (wake-up) mode to use on a per-port
basis. If you only have one parport, the portname argument
may be omitted - but be careful as this may cause problems
on multi-scanner systems. You may have as many of these
lines as you like, as long as each has a unique port name.
The valid initialisation modes are FB620P (which strobes
10101010 and 01010101 on the data pins), FB630P (which
strobes 11001100 and 00110011 on the data pins) and AUTO,
which will try FB630P mode first then FB620P mode second.
The FB620P mode is also used by the FB320P. The FB630P mode
is used by the FB330P, N340P, and N640P.
Option force_nibble forces the driver to use nibble mode
even if ECP mode is reported to work by libieee1284. This
works-around the rare issue of ECP mode being reported to
work by the library, then not working.
TIPS
Hit the "Calibrate" button before scanning. It vastly
improves the quality of scans.
To enable automatic detection of your scanner, uncomment the
"canon_pp" line from /etc/sane.d/dll.conf
FILES
/etc/sane.d/canon_pp.conf
The backend configuration file (see also description of
SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).
/usr/lib/sane/libsane-canon_pp.a
The static library implementing this backend.
/usr/lib/sane/libsane-canon_pp.so
The shared library implementing this backend (present
on systems that support dynamic loading).
sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 1 October 2002 2
SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-canon_pp(5)
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_CANON_PP
If the library was compiled with debug support enabled,
this environment variable controls the debug level for
this backend. Higher debug levels increase the verbos-
ity of the output.
Example: export SANE_DEBUG_CANON_PP=4
NOTES
Features available in the Windows interface
Brightness and Contrast
These are not implemented, and probably never will be.
These appear to be implemented entirely in software.
Use GIMP or a similar program if you need these
features.
Descreen Mode
This appears on our first analysis to be just oversam-
pling with an anti-aliasing filter. Again, it seems to
be implemented entirely in software, so GIMP is your
best bet for now.
Gamma Tables
This is under investigation, but for now only a simple
gamma profile (ie: the one returned during calibration)
will be loaded.
Communication Problems
ECP mode in libieee1284 doesn't always work properly, even
with new hardware. We believe that this is a ppdev problem.
If you change the configuration file to include force_nibble
, the problem will go away, but you will only be able to
scan in nibble mode.
sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 1 October 2002 3
SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-canon_pp(5)
Sometimes the scanner can be left in a state where our code
cannot revive it. If the backend reports no scanner
present, try unplugging the power and plugging it back in.
Also try unplugging printers from the pass-through port.
The scanner will not respond correctly to our commands when
you first plug in the power. You may find if you try a scan
very soon after plugging in the power that the backend will
incorrectly report that you have no scanner present. To
avoid this, give it about 10 seconds to reset itself before
attempting any scans.
Repeated Lines
Sometimes at high resolutions (ie. 600dpi) you will notice
lines which appear twice. These lines correspond to points
where the scanner head has stopped during the scan (it stops
every time the internal 64kb buffer is full). Basically it's
a mechanical problem inside the scanner, that the tolerance
of movement for a start/stop event is greater than 1/600
inches. I've never tried the windows driver so I'm not sure
how (or if) it works around this problem, but as we don't
know how to rewind the scanner head to do these bits again,
there's currently no nice way to deal with the problem.
Grey-scale Scans
Be aware that the scanner uses the green LEDs to read grey-
scale scans, meaning green coloured things will appear
lighter than normal, and red and blue coloured items will
appear darker than normal. For high-accuracy grey-scale
scans of colour items, it's best just to scan in colour and
convert to grey-scale in graphics software such as the GIMP.
FB620P/FB320P Caveats
These models can not be reset in the same way as the others.
The windows driver doesn't know how to reset them either -
when left with an inconsistent scanner, it will start scan-
ning half way down the page!
Aborting is known to work correctly on the FB*30P models,
and is known to be broken on the FB*20P models. The FB620P
which I tested on simply returns garbage after a scan has
been aborted using the method we know. Aborting is able to
leave the scanner in a state where it can be shut down, but
not where another scan can be made.
SEE ALSO
sane(7), sane-dll(5) http://canon-fb330p.sourceforge.net/
sane-backends 1.0.19Last change: 1 October 2002 4
SANE Scanner Access Now Easy sane-canon_pp(5)
AUTHOR
This backend is primarily the work of Simon Krix (Reverse
Engineering), and Matthew Duggan (SANE interface).
Many thanks to Kevin Easton for his comments and help, and
Kent A. Signorini for his help with the N340P.
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: 1 October 2002 5