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@alioth-lists.debian.net
       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 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
       constitutes a valid device name.

FILES

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

       /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-abaton.a
              The static library implementing this backend.

       /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/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.  On *NIX systems, 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 directories 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 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@alioth-lists.debian.net.

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(5) backend
       by Milon Firikis.

                                                   11 Jul 2008                                    sane-abaton(5)