[sane-devel] Several comments on Canon N670U support

[Theodore Kilgore]

Gerhard,

I assume the typo in Plustek-USB.txt got fixed.

I also assume that someone is looking for the "off" switch for the light.
To clarify further what I said about this, let me add that, by visual
inspection, the head appears to return correctly to its "park" position
after a scan, but the light remains lit.


On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Jaeger, Gerhard wrote:

> Hi Theodore,
>
> thanks for the feedback, here are some comments:
>
> On Friday, 4. October 2002 06:51, kilgota at khayyam.math.auburn.edu wrote:
> [SNIP]
> You might use gamma curves with factor 2.5 as the calibration
> does currently not work with the canons...
>
OK, so what in the **** is a "gamma curve"? And I assume you mean I should
use it in GIMP after scanning?
>
> > 4. I get the impression from reading the mailing list that there is a
> > confusion about what is required for supporting a USB scanner vs. what is
> > required for supporting a parallel port scanner.
>
> You are right here. I'll change this.
>
I sympathize with your problems about this, but I have to teach
mathematics for a living. One of the biggest parts of doing the job
right is figuring out creative ways to get people to pay attention
and actually to assimilate what you are telling them. And, naturally, even
if we told them and they didn't understand it is still our fault. Goes
with the territory. You really have to put up big signs, and still some
will read without understanding.


 > > > 5. I didn't try the buttons. Do they work, too?
>
> No and currently not planned as it is quite not clear how SANE
> will support this...

Fine by me, actually. I can't quite see why the buttons were put on in the
first place, taking into consideration what they are supposed to do. Their
functions seemed to me to be very Windows-specific. Things like "scan this
and attach it to the e-mail I am composing right now." Seems silly to us
Linux people, doesn't it? However, we should remember that there are other
people out there who like such features in Windows, or at least are used
to them.

Come to think of it, I do have a suggestion about such matters:

If the effect of the button pushes could somehow be trapped by some
program similar to "dumpkeys," and (for example) then mapped to start a
specific command by some file like keytable.map then it would be quite
easy to write script frontends which would be triggered when such a
"signal" is received and then start up the right program (for example,
xsane), and then do with the output what the user would reasonably
expect... As an analogy, I just love to run mc, and on several machines I
fixed it so that F12 is mapped to a command to start Midnight commander,
until I finally overcame my laziness about typing mc and hitting <ENTER>.

The first thing would be to have available a daemon which would trap those
specific signals coming in over the USB port, WITHOUT having already
started a SANE program, because the idea would be then to start SANE to do
some specific task. Gerhard, this is not a job for either of us, I
suspect. Certainly I am not trying to get you to drop everything and
work on it. But perhaps somebody else will read this and think about it.


Theodore Kilgore

>
> Gerhard
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