[sane-devel] Latest iscan-1.52-1 rpm for RH8.0

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 12:33:52AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 December 2003 21:41, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote:
> >Hi Gene,
> >
> >The EPSON Perfection 1250U is really a GT-7200.  In order for iscan
> > to find it, you need to:
> >
> >  * make sure the epkowa backends is activated in dll.net
> I don't have such a dll.net file.  I do have a dll.conf, in 
> /usr/local/etc/sane.d

Sorry, my mistake.  Of course that should have been dll.conf.

> >  * make sure you have a "usb /dev/usb/scanner0" line in epkowa.conf
> >    (or something similar)
> I do, in that file above.
> 
> >  * AND explicitly tell the kernel's scanner module the vendor and
> >    product IDs it should use
> 
> No longer required, I forwarded that stuff to the scanner.h maintainer 
> over a year ago, and its now part of the kernel code for scanner.  As 
> I don't use modules but all builtins, its found just fine in the 
> dmesg output.

Some people still run old kernels ;-)

> >Hope this helps,
> 
> Unforch, it doesn't help Olaf.
> 
> Humm, this is odd, very odd indeed!  I just ran it again, from a cli, 
> and this time I got an advisory asking me which scanner backend, and 
> showing, in a multiselector if I click on the name, both the plustek 
> AND the GT-7200 backends!  I've never seen this before, but I have 
> rebooted to 2.6.0-mm1 from 2.6.0 since the last time I tried it.  

At least that is good news.

> All previous times, it simply brought up an advisory box saying it 
> couldn't communicate with the scanner.  Click on the OK and get your 
> cli back.

That message is basically a "Something odd happened and I couldn't care 
less about what it really is so I'm not telling you" error message.  I 
really hate it because it hides the real problem from the user and as a 
result the developer who gets the support request (eh, that's me ;-).

> Changing the selector to the GT-7200 choice and clicking OK, and 
> voila!  Leave it on the plustek it finds first, and its as above, 
> can't talk to scanner, goodby... I have the iscan front end displayed 
> on my screen for the first time ever.

The plustek backend should not have shown up in the list of choices with 
iscan.  It's a bug, really, because iscan only supports its own epkowa 
backend (yes, that sucks!) and the net backend (sort of).

> Did a preview scan of a Fine Woodworking magazine cover, and I see 
> that it gives me a choice to print to files or lpr, whose default is 
> a C-82 set for high speed utility work via cups, at 360dpi.  I'm 
> going to do a scan at 360 dpi and see if it will print.  Hummm, sure 
> is doing a lot of shoe shining, this will take many minutes, with the 
> progress bar at 40%, the printer has not started.  It also stalls 
> momentarily when I switch to that screen to observe it, but not when 
> I switch back the screen kmail is on.

Screen updates of iscan are, eh well, a bit slow.  A 360dpi scan of an 
A4 or letter size original should not take all that long, but this of 
course depends a bit on your hardware.  Anyway, the Perfection 1250 is 
most certainly not a speed daemon ;-)

> [...]  Ok, scan fully completed, 
> about 3 or 4 minutes of shoeshining the carriage,  and printer is 
> outputting an image thats scaled up by about 3x, and it appears that 
> its going to tile it over many sheets of paper.  Yup, at least 3 
> sheets high, and probably 3 sheets wide.

Oh, that one.  Yes, with cups as your print system you may find that the 
image gets resized.  This is courtesy of cups because iscan doesn't give 
it any info about the image resolution.  That should be fixed in our new 
version (to be released around mid-January).  BTW, this release supports 
the Perfection 3170 too.

> Ok, so thats a nice story, how do I get it to scale 1/1?  Or am I 
> stuck with files, and using the gimp to print it, which I believe 
> will work, or at least it works to the right scaleing with the output 
> of the plustek backend.

You can scan at the resolution that your cups set up expects or, like 
you mention, save to file and print via the GIMP.  Alternatively, you 
can use iscan as a GIMP plugin so you don't have to save to file.
# BTW, sending it directly to the printer from iscan also saves it to 
# file first in your /tmp directory before dashing it off.

> And, lets say I make up an icon to launch it from X, what sort of a 
> command line do I compose in the properties that will pass the 
> GT-7200 choice to the iscan front end?

Command line options are non-existant :-(

> Thanks for tickling me into trying it again!
> 
> Oh, I like the logo panel, lower right corner of your gui, thats cute.
> 
> Anyplace to see any histograms?  I find they're the best way to match 
> up the various colors gamma's for really good reproductions.

No histograms, but you could send a request for them (and other things)
via

  https://www.epkowa.co.jp/secure/english/linux_e/support2_top.html

Hope that helps,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen                            EPSON KOWA Corporation, ECS
GnuPG key: 6BE37D90/AB6B 0D1F 99E7 1BF5 EB97  976A 16C7 F27D 6BE3 7D90
Penguin's lib!       -- I hack, therefore I am --               LPIC-2