[sane-devel] SnapScan - AcerScan 300f (Newbie)

[yardbird]

Hi there,
I just downloaded sane 1.0.5 and xsane 0.79, and installed them successfully. 
I'm trying to get working an AcerScan 300f of a friend of mine, who is about 
to switch to linux. Sane and xsane work well, since I can scan with no 
problem up to 300 dpi. However if I select 600 dpi I get an image which is 
compressed in the sense of width. I read on the scanner's manual that the 
optical sensor provided has a 300x600 dpi resolution, so my guess is that 
this asimmetry in the sensor reflects upon the scanned image. Is that so?
Another thing I would like to know is if next sane versions are going to 
support interpolation for this scanner, since with windows' driver it is 
possible to go up to 9600 dpi (I don't know if this can be useful, since the 
sensors' resolution is fixed and everything else is "invented" by the 
software, is that alright?)
Another question (maybe off-topic since it partially regards xsane): when I 
make a color preview with xsane it takes a long time, almost the time of a 
complete scan. Instead, if I make a gray preview the entire process is much 
faster. Is that a backend problem? Does someone knows how to setup xsane so 
that it keeps making gray previews without specifying this everytime (I tried 
to save device's preferences, but this does not work)?
Sorry for these (possibly) stupid questions.... Thanks for assisting and best 
regards,

francesco