[sane-devel] Canon 5000F driver

[Matthew Duggan]

G'day,

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 08:51:19PM +0100, Henning Meier-Geinitz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 02:24:44PM +0100, Thibault North wrote:
..
> > and to begin I project to go at Canon to ask them for that scanner
> > specifications.
> 
> While Canon has never answered to such requests as far as I know it's
> always worth a try.

As much as I would like to think things have changed, I wouldn't hold 
your breath waiting for a response.

> > What do I exactly need to know (everything possible ? ok :-))
> 
> Developer's documentation. A description of all the functions and
> meanings of any data of the chipset. A description how and in which
> order to use these functions/registers. 
> 
> And/or the source code of their Windows driver.

I'd start by asking for something simple that they know you could find
out if you were dedicated enough (eg, what chipset does it use), then 
ask for something a bit more detailed (eg, specifications for the chipset).
I can assure you that you'll never get the windows driver source, but
you can always try asking for that too.

Put it in writing too, some companies (not neccessarily Canon, just
generally) seem to take a view that a request by email does not equate 
to a real request.  When something's on paper they tend to feel obliged 
to respond in kind .. and at least you'll have some paper proving that 
they don't want to help :)

Canon's regional offices are mostly just sales too, you'll probably want 
to cc Canon Japan if you want any chance of a useful response.

We did this for the parport driver but our request seemed to get lost in
translation, and they responded by telling us that it wasn't supported
in Linux.. hmm.

Once you've done that, assume that they'll refuse to answer all
questions, and start reverse-engineering.

Enjoy!

- Matthew Duggan