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

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 08:16:32AM -0800, Art Fore wrote:
> Rene Rebe I think has done a fantastic job on the avision driver for
> the HP5300C, I don't doubt that for a minute, but why does it have to
> have the avision name?

Rene will probably comment this...

Generally spoken there are some backends that support different makes
and vendors. E.g. the Mustek backend also supports some Trust and
Primax scanners. That's just because the scanners are identical, only
the labels are changed. Other backends like Plustek support a chipset
that is used by many different manufacturers (e.g. Plustek, Mustek,
KYE, Hewlett-Packard). It doesn't make sense to copy the code to
another backend just because of the name. That's why there is not only
the name of the backend but also the names of the supported
manufacturers in http://www.mostang.com/sane/sane-backends.html .

> I do think the programmers are doing a fantastic job on Linux applications,
> etc., but I do think there needs to be more put into a "Newbie" installing
> some of this stuff. The community needs input from someone "off the street"
> not familiar with Linux in  order to improve Linux so that it can be used by
> a normal mortal person. I have sent emails to HP, Nvidia, and SuSe
> complaining about their support. The only way we can get them to listen is
> to compain, and if enough people do it, it will finally sink in. 

The Linux distributions are a way to make it easy. Just select SANE
from the package management system. Depending on the scanner and the
level of support by the distribution you may not even have to select
the scanner or do some configuration. The problem with this is that
the packages aren't up to date.

Let's face it: Installing from sources and patching isn't something
you can easily do without any Unix experience. It's not magic but you
need some experience. Compare it to fiddling with the registry in
Windows.

> As far as the documentation, in the sane faq, most places it calls out
> find-scanner.

True, but there is an explanation at the beginning.

> I have never gotten find-scanner to work, however,

These are the same programs. "find-scanner" is the old name, the newer
sane versions use sane-find-scanner. The newer versions of this
program can also find USB scanners.

I will write a mail to the maintainer of the FAQ.

> sane-find-scanner works, if you include the path. Have tried numerous
> methods of getting the /usr/local/bin in the path environment on a permanent
> basis, none have succeded yet.

I'm using /etc/profile, but that's Debian. Maybe it helps seaching in
/etc for a file that contains your actual path.

> This is only one example. SuSE has some of
> the best manuals I guess in the Linux world, but there are some errors in
> them and some of the commands do not work as advertised, probably from
> previus versions. There are some linux commands that do not work in SuSE I
> guess they have removed them.

Or they are in packages you haven't installed...

> The scanner is only a year old, but I had seen several places on
> the internet where there was a driver for it. Just did not understand the
> patch part of the the avision driver, that is, the driver from Rene Rebe's
> site already has the patch in it. This is not very obvious from the
> documentation that I had read. Why should I through away a 1 year old
> scanner? 

You shouldn't. My comment shouldn't imply that you shouldn't ask if
something is unclear. I just complained about complaining and about
complaining to the wrong people :-)

> Nvidia
[...]
> Got a Xircom PCMCIA
[...]
> When I upgraded to XFree86 4.2
[...]
All this may be true, but not related to SANE so I don't comment on
this.

> So far, linux has been quite frustrating experience as far as getting it
> installed and operating.

I could say the same about Windows. To be exact, it just hasn't
installed and doesn't work until now for me. And the "for me" is
the important term.

> When everything works, it is great, just getting it
> to that point is a bear. What good is an operating system if you can't use
> it for any real work but just to tinker with?

That's the reason why I don't use MS any more :-)

> If it were not for Microsoft, would there be any GUI desktops for
> Linux or Unix now? Probably not with anywhere near the capabilities
> of todays system.  

I have a different view about this in many ways but this is really
getting to far away from sane now.

Bye,
  Henning