sane-abaton.5

sane-abaton(5)           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 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 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 sup-
       port   for   it.   Have  a  look  at  http://www.sane-project.org/mail-
       ing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel.

       Abaton is out of business, and these  scanners  are  not  supported  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  acquisition.

       However,  the  protocol is very similar to, though not compatible 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 special 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 consti-
       tutes a valid device name.

FILES

       /usr/local/etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
              The  backend  configuration  file  (see  also   description   of
              SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

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

       /usr/local/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 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 config-
              uration file is searched in two default directories: first,  the
              current     working     directory     (".")    and    then    in
              /usr/local/etc/sane.d.  If the value of the environment variable
              ends  with  the  directory separator 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
              "/usr/local/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 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.

       If  you have found something that you think is a bug, please attempt to
       recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON environment 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  reason-
              able  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.

sane-backends 1.0.16              19 Nov 1998                   sane-abaton(5)