[sane-devel] Insights from a newbie backend writer...

[Earle F. Philhower, III]

Hi Fred,

Don't give up yet, some suggestions you probably already heard below...

--- Fred Odendaal <freshshelf@rogers.com> wrote:
> So, I'm thinking "I've got a degree in comp. sci. How difficult can it 
> be to write a scanner driver?" 
...big snip...
> Finally after many Windows scans and log files at various different 
> sizes, resolutions, and colour or gray  scale mode I start writing the 
> backend. It only took me about 2 weeks before I could scan on Linux, but 
> this is the easy part! What I soon discovered is something called 
> CALIBRATION. At 600x1200dpi colour resolution the Windows driver 
> actually does ~20 scans off to the side of the glass flat bed. I have no 
> idea what its doing. By looking at the usb logs it appears to be setting 
> the gain and the dc offset in a gradual fashion over several calibration 
> scans.

Dump the received binary data to an image and then just see which
control register they're iterating over.  Then it's just a matter of
figuring what they want the end image to look like (ie. adjust offset
down until black pixels are < XXX, then increase gains until white
pixels are near YYY).  The received calibration image was really helpful
when I was trying to figure out what the heck the Microtek driver
was doing!

It may also be adjusting the individual pixel gains for each sensor
element.  If there's a really large download of slowly varying #s
between scans that might be a pointer.

Good luck,




		
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