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@alioth-lists.debian.net.    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)