NAME

       sane-pint - SANE backend for scanners that use the PINT device driver

DESCRIPTION

       The  sane-pint  library  implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that provides
       generic access to hand-held and flatbed scanners using the PINT (PINT Is Not Twain) device
       driver.  The PINT driver is being actively developed on the OpenBSD platform, and has been
       ported to a few other *nix-like operating systems.

       PINT is designed to provide  an  ioctl(2)  interface  to  many  different  scanner  types.
       However,  this  backend  has  only been tested with flatbed single-pass scanners, and more
       work will probably be required to get it to use other scanner types successfully.

       If have successfully used the PINT driver with your scanner, but it does  not  work  using
       this  SANE  backend,  please  let  us  know.   To  do  this, send a mail with the relevant
       information for your  scanner  to  sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org.   Have  a  look  at
       http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel.

DEVICE NAMES

       This backend expects device names of the form:

              special

       Where  special  is  the  UNIX  path-name  for  the  special device that corresponds to the
       scanner.  The special device name must be a PINT device or a symlink  to  such  a  device.
       For example, under NetBSD or OpenBSD, such a device name could be /dev/ss0 or /dev/scan0.

CONFIGURATION

       The  contents  of  the  pint.conf.  file is a list of device names that correspond to PINT
       scanners.  Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark  (#)  are  ignored.   A  sample
       configuration file is shown below:

              /dev/scanner
              # this is a comment
              /dev/ss1

FILES

       @CONFIGDIR@/pint.conf
              The backend configuration file (see also description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

       @LIBDIR@/libsane-pint.a
              The static library implementing this backend.

       @LIBDIR@/libsane-pint.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  configuration  file is searched in two default directories: first, the current
              working directory (".") and then in @CONFIGDIR@.  If the value of  the  environment
              variable  ends with the directory separator character, then the default directories
              are searched after the explicitly  specified  directories.   For  example,  setting
              SANE_CONFIG_DIR  to  "/tmp/config:"  would result in directories "tmp/config", ".",
              and "@CONFIGDIR@" being searched (in this order).

       SANE_DEBUG_PINT
              If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this  environment  variable
              controls the debug level for this backend.  E.g., a value of 128 requests all debug
              output to be printed.  Smaller levels reduce verbosity.

SEE ALSO

       sane(7)

AUTHOR

       Gordon Matzigkeit, adapted from existing backends written by David Mosberger.

BUGS

       There are minor roundoff errors when adjusting the ranges, since PINT uses units of 1/1200
       of  an  inch,  and  SANE  normally  uses millimeters.  Symptoms of these errors are skewed
       images.  This should really be fixed (no pun intended) as soon as  possible,  but  I  just
       don't  know/care  enough  about  fixed-point representation and roundoff errors to do this
       correctly.  Workaround: use inches as the scanning  unit,  and  everything  usually  works
       fine.

       The  PINT  0.5e interface does not provide a way to determine valid ranges for DPI, modes,
       and scan sizes.  So, the SANE backend queries the PINT device, and  dynamically  discovers
       valid  ranges  by  doing  a  binary  search.   This  means that the driver takes longer to
       initialize than seems necessary.

       Resetting the scanner does not seem to work (at least not on my HP ScanJet 4p).  For  that
       reason, the driver sends a SCIOCRESTART, then gobbles up any remaining input until it hits
       EOF.

       Not all of the scanners have been identified (i.e. whether they are flatbed or handheld).

       X and Y resolutions are assumed to be the same.

       No testing has been done on three-pass or handheld scanners, or  with  Automatic  Document
       Feeder support.

@PACKAGEVERSION@                           14 Jul 2008                               sane-pint(5)