[sane-devel] Proposal: Change of the backend and model status strings

[david stevenson]

Here are 2 personal opinions

On Friday 06 June 2003 7:18 pm, Henning Meier-Geinitz wrote:>
> There has been some criticism of the current handling of the :status
> keywords in the .desc files. These filse are used to create our lists
> of scanners and the output of the scanner search engine.
>
> We currently have two sorts of status indicators:
>
> 1) The backend status: alpha, beta or stable
> 2) The model status: unsupported, untested, alpha, beta or stable
>
>
> Concerning the backends status I think we don't really have the need
> to talk about stability. Crashing backends are rather seldom. So I'm
> not sure if we need this overall status at all anymore. If we want to
> keep it, what about a measurement on how active the backend is
> maintained, e.g.:
>
> unmaintained: There is no maintainer. Only security and other
>               grave bugs will be fixed
> supported:    There is a maintainer for the backend. Bugs will be fixed and
>               patches will be accepted.
> development:  The backend is under active development. New features
>               and/or new models may be added.

Many backends support several scanners, and may be "supported" for most and 
under "development" for some. 
Is unmaintained and supported enough without the 3rd option?

> Model status: As proposed by others, I'd like to have a measurement on
> how good a scanner works compared to its capabilities. E.g.:
>
> unsupported:    This device is not working at all.
> untested:       The device may work, but nobody has tested it yet.
> minimal:        The device is detected and does something but is not
>                 really usable. E.g. It scans in one mode but colors
> 		are off.
> basic:          The device is usable, but some modes are not supported
>                 or quality is not perfect yet.
> good:           Usable for day-to-day work. Some unusual modes or
>                 seldomly-used features aren't supported.
> perfect:        Everything the scanner can do is supported.
>

I do not like the word "perfect" it implies totally bug free and not 
improvable, would "complete" be more suitable.

>
> Here is an example on how the HTML lists could look like:
>
> http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/tmp/sane-mfgs.html#MUSTEK
>
> Only the model status is implemented. And only Mustek SCSi scanners
> have set the values.
>
> Comments?
>
> Bye,
>   Henning
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