[sane-devel] Sane with Brother MFC-9880

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 07:32:50PM +0200, Risanecek wrote:
> Hi Henning,
> 
> On 10/9/05, Henning Meier-Geinitz <henning at meier-geinitz.de> wrote:
> 
> > So the status of this scanner is untested, which means that it may or
> > may not work. The backend is "brother" which is not part of the
> > sane-backends distribution.
> 
> 
> I knew that. Therefore I wrote that I'd like to give the feedback which is
> asked for in the docs you referenced.
> 
> Have you also tried scanning with scanimage (just to be sure)?
> 
> 
> Of course. I/O Error
> 
> SANE_DEBUG_BACKENDNAME=255 scanimage >/dev/null
> 
> 
> The brother backend seems not to provide any debug messages.

Maybe it does. Have a look at backend/brother_log.c. I think it's
intended to write messages to a log file in /usr/local/Brother/sane/ .

> Just for my understanding: What is the correct device identification:
> 
> brother:/dev/usbscanner
> libusb:002:003
> brother:bus2;dev1; <--- have this here but never seen it in documentation

Depends on the backend. A SANE device name starts with the backend
name ("brother"), then a ":" and then the name of the device itsself.
This name can be selected by the backend author. Usually it's
something like "libusb:001:003" or "/dev/sg3" but "bus2;dev1;" is also
ok. 

> > Resumee: "Scanner Access Now Easy" I must confess my interpretation
> > > of "easy" differs somewhat.
> >
> > Blame Brother. It's their backend and SANE developers can only give
> > limited help because that backend contains non-free binary-only code.
> > So their support is the right address for problems with the backend.
> 
> I issued a support query to brother - let's see how/when they react.
> As for the "blaming": My advice for the sane developers is to mentally
> take a less "vendor bashing" position.

Usually "we" are not bashing vendors. That's why there is quite some
information targeted directly to vendors:
http://www.sane-project.org/manufacturers.html

The comment was meant for bashing you :-)

> E.g. paragraph 2.7 of the Sane FAQ is IMHO not justified for brother,
> because
> telling " Other vendors actively ignore anything that is not Windows thus
> limiting the sales of their scanners." is quite pathetic with the presence
> of these pages:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/sane_drivers.html

While the FAQ is really usefull for many people, it's still just the
personal opinion of its author ljm Dullaart. I'm sure he'll include
Brother in this list, when you send him an email.

The list is not complete anyway, there are also other vendors helping
the development of SANE backends. That's why it says that these are
only examples.

His comment about "Other vendors actively ignore anything that is not
Windows thus..." is true nevertheless. It doesn't mean "all other
vendors" but just "some other vendors".

We appreciate vendors making there own SANE backends. That's why they
are listed on our website even if they are not free. It would be even
better, if they were not binary-only but it's better than nothing.

Bye,
  Henning