[sane-devel] Sane is definately not Scanner Access Now Easy

[abel deuring]

Henning Meier-Geinitz wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 02:05:18PM -0800, Art Fore wrote:
> > Documentation for all of this is spread all over and some of it is flat out
> > wrong, especially for these versions.
> 
> Please explain in detail which SANE documentation is wrong and which
> one is at a wrong place. I promise I will fix it if I can and if you
> are right.

Henning,

I agree with most what you wrote -- but we should also be fair to Art.
After all, he wrote that he is new to Linux, and he needed indeed quite
some time and efforts to get his scanner working. Perhaps the subject he
used for his rants is not "technically correct", since things like the
library path and shell initialization were part of his problem, and this
stuff is not strictly a Sane topic. But from a user's viewpoint, this
does not matter that much. 

You are also right that the Suse website, Suse's Linux distribution and
the Sane documentation itself describe quite many possible problems and
solutions for these problems, but again, it is not that easy for a new
Linux user to find the right stuff. 

I have seen far more serious difficulties with Linux newbies. People are
sometimes even not able to describe the problem they have. If I ask
certain questions like "what do you see in /var/log/messages regarding
problem xyz; to look into this file, open a shell (click the shell icon)
and type 'less /var/log/messages', then type a 'G', next ... If you
don't understand, what I mean or if you have problem to enter the
commands I'm describing, ask again.", I sometimes even don't get an
answer. 

I have observed that people prefer to install Linux from scratch several
times in order to fix a (probably simple) problem with a network
adapter, graphic card or a printer installation, instead of trying to
analyze the problem, or providing informations from log files. And these
are not people with an IQ of 50, but intelligent guys with serious
skills in their profession and in other fields.

Perhaps this is a sort of a cultural problem: With Windows, you have
quite often no alternative as to try some more or less "magic" attempts
to solve a problem, and people need to get acquainted with the other
methods possible with free software. And we must accept that these
methods are sometimes not that simple. After all, it is not very obvious
that things like gtk header files must be installed in order to compile
a graphical Sane frontend. Firstly, you need to know, what the
corresponding message from configure means, and secondly you need to
know where to find these files in your distribution. If these files are
in a package series like "development" (technically, a reasonable
choice), and ordinary user will not necessarily search there in the
first place.

Considering all this, Art showed much patience and a quite good
understanding, how and where to ask for help. Ok, I missed too in his
rants a bit of appreciation for the help he got -- but he had also a
number of reasonable arguments. We should accept that hardware
installation can be difficult with Linux (while it can be sort of fun
with Windows; seeing all this "detecting new serial prots, new
keyboard..." after replacement of a mainboard, I wonder, why the new
keyboard often looks so dirty...), and we should appreciate that Art
offered to contribute a howto.

Abel