[sane-devel] Vendor and product ids in description files

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi developers,

The format of the SANE description files (.desc) has been changed to
allow the addition of USB vendor and product ids to each model entry.
These ids will be shown in the HTML lists (and all other output
formats) and therefore help to identify a USB scanner exactly. The
second reason for adding these ids to the description files is to
generate the lists for hotplug/udev events (e.g. libsane.usermap)
automatically from the description files. This is not yet implemented
but work in progress.

Now the USB ids for all USB device should be added to the description
files,. Backend authors please start as soon as possible so we have a
complete list soon.

I'll take care for external and unsupported backends as well for
scanners listed in libsane.usermap but not in one of the .desc files.
Also I'll try to add the ids to unsupported devices.

Once most description files are updated, I'll add a warning message to
sane-desc.c which will be printed if it finds a USB device without
vendor and product ids given.

This is the format (form doc/descriptions.txt):
`:usbid' defines the USB vendor and product ids of the device. It has two
arguments which must be lower case hexadecimal (4 digits). The first one is the
USB vendor id, the second one the USB üproduct id. The keyword refers to the
previous `:model', is optional, and applicable for devices with :interface "USB"
only, and should be used only once per model.
Example: `:usbid "0x1234" "0x4321"'

As an example, the gt68xx.desc file has already been updated with USB
ids. The HTML output looks like this:
http://www.sane-project.org/lists/sane-backends-cvs.html#S-GT68XX

Bye,
  Henning