xenial (5) sane-abaton.5.gz

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  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/arch_triplet/sane/libsane-abaton.a
              The static library implementing this backend.

       /usr/lib/arch_triplet/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 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@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 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 backend by
       Milon Firikis.

                                                   11 Jul 2008                                    sane-abaton(5)