[sane-devel] xsane efficiency problem?

[Denis.Roegel at loria.fr]

Hello,

I recently upgraded an old linux (Red Hat as of 2001) to Ubuntu,
and with it I moved to a new sane/xsane. I have been very disappointed,
because my scanner (Epson Perfection 1240U) is now much slower
to handle. There are three problems:

  1) I am losing a huge amount of time changing directories,
      and this was so much simpler back in 2001; I can't see
      why anyone would like the current scheme, except if
      you are scanning only one or two pages in a month;
      anybody with serious scanning needs will find the current
      xsane defaults very annoying;

  2) When previewing, the page area cannot be selected before
     the scanner carried has moved back to its original position;
     this wasn't so in the 2001 version of sane/xsane, and therefore
     I consider that the current encoding is not enough efficient;
     something has been lost between 2001 and 2006 and I would like
     it to be restored; perhaps this has something to do with
     threads, but the page area selection should not have to wait
     until the carriage is back in place;

  3) Once an page has been scanned, saving takes a lot of time;
     this may already have been the case in the 2001 version,
     but it wasn't a problem, because previewing could be
     started right away; now, I have to wait a huge amount of time
     for the save operation;

Please realize that all this concerns the same machine, with the
same scanner. Only xsane/sane (and linux) have been upgraded.
It should therefore be possible to go back to the former version.
Btw, can I install an old sane/xsane ?

Thanks,

D. Roegel