[sane-devel] [lsb-discuss] Scanning interfaces and LSB 4.0

[m. allan noah]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Till Kamppeter
<till.kamppeter at gmail.com> wrote:
> Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>> The simple solution would be add the necessary Scanner interfaces to the
>> LSB.  Unfortunately, we have many other high priority items on our work
>> queue, and the SANE interfaces need to be documented before they could
>> be added to the LSB.  This means we need volunteers to do the following:
>>
>> 1)  Determine the set of SANE interfaces that needs to be added to the
>> LSB.
>>
>
> Here we would need the complete set of interfaces for a scanner
> driver/backend. Anyone from the SANE developers could tell what exactly
> is needed?

Every function and structure covered in section 4 of doc/sane.ps from
our source distro. If any of them are left out, existing frontends
will not be able to use the backend, which seems to defeat the purpose
of LSB inclusion.

>> 2)  Find out what documentation, if any exists for those interfaces.
>>
>
> Ducumentation of the API is here:
>
> http://www.sane-project.org/html/doc009.html

the ps file covers the API, and should be considered canon, not the
html version.

>
>> 3)  Write any missing interfaces.
>>
>
> You mean documentation/tests.

we do have a test backend that frontend authors can use to test their
code, and scanimage does some simple tests against a backend, but i
have a feeling LSB would want more? can you elaborate?

>> If we can't get someone to do this, there are other alternatives, such
>> as issuing waivers to printer driver packages.  And maybe if the SANE
>> interfaces are in a file with a specific name, and/or there is an easy
>> way to recognize a package as being a printer driver, we can teach the
>> LSB AtK to automatically give the scanner module a pass.
>>
>> Till, is that a fair summary of the situation?  And do we have anyone
>> with some free time to work on it?  Unfortuntaly most of the usual
>> suspects are busy with other high priority LSB 4.0 projects....
>
> Yes, this is OK. As a last mean we issue waivers, but the best solution
> would be having SANE in the LSB. I appreciate very much if SANE
> developers could help here.

It is hard to know how to help you without more specifics about what
LSB needs...

allan
-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"