[sane-devel] How to combine scanned images together and printthem as a file

[abel deuring]

Stephen,
> Hi Abel,
> 
> Thanks for your advice.
> 
> abel deuring wrote:
>  > - snip -
>  >
>  > I think that there is no free software based out-of-the-box solution
>  > available. But you can combine a number of useful free software
>  > packages
>  > to get the job done: Sane for image aquisition; and tools like
>  > ImageMagick, the pnmtools or similar for image format conversion.
>  > Ghostscript can produce PDF files, provided that you have Postscript
>  > data available -- and there is more than one way to write Postscript
>  > files from "pixel images". Other members of this mailing list have
>  > already mentioned them.
> 
> Could you please advise what is the name of the LINK - "to write
> Postscript files from "pixel images" which you mentioned?

Henning was once again faster than me ;) As he wrote, the two most 
prominent programs are ImageMagicks's convert (mogrify from the same 
package might be an interesting alternative for batch jobs) and pnmtops 
from pnmtools. Gimp comes to mind, if you prefer a graphical user interface.

> 
>  > You can "glue" these programs with shell scripts, written for bash,
>  > csh
>  > or the Korn shell. Alternatively, yxou can use a more advanced
>  > scripting
>  > languages like Perl, Python or Ruby to get the job done. Python has
>  > even
>  > its own "pixel image manipulation" package, called PIL. (The other
>  > languages may have similar tools, but I am not aware of any.)
> 
> The problem is I am not a programmer having no experience to glue
> them together.  Could you please give me some hint/guide to start.

Well, the most straightforward way would be to write one or more script 
for the bourne shell (resp. it's GNU reincarnation called bash); that's 
sort of the "alternative" to Windows batch files, only far more 
powerful. Personally I don't like bourne shell scripting, because the 
syntax looka bit ugly to me. But for small scripts that should not be a 
huge problem.

Regarding Perl or Python (or perhaps Ruby): Just try them ;) My 
favourite is Python, but discussing the pros and cons can easily end up 
in flame wars -- so have a look for yourself. Both Perl and Python are 
easy to learn. The Python web site has a good short tutorial, similar 
tutorials are probably also for Perl available somewhere on the Net. But 
using one of these languages is probably only necessary for you, if you 
get the impression that your shell scripts become longer and longer and 
tend to look more and more unreadable ;)

Abel