[sane-devel] Network scanners

[m. allan noah]

2008/9/3  <rozelak at volny.cz>:
> I really appologise for multiple sending, I forgot to fill subject :-(.
> Plese ignore my previous post ...
>
> On Tuesday 18 of March 2008, Johannes Meixner wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> On Mar 14 16:33 rozelak at volny.cz wrote (shortened):
>> > I would like to ask, how network scanners are supported.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> > I am interested, as we have Canon iR2200 copy/printer/scanner
>> > (huge) machine in my work, and I would like to know if it
>> > can be accessed from linux (or SANE in general).
>>
>> I think that the question is whether a SANE driver
>> (i.e. a SANE backend) is really needed to use it with Linux
>> or whether one can use this device also stand-alone.
>>
>> Normally one can scan directly on a big and fat network
>> printer scanner copier and specify scan resolution
>> and image file format (e.g. tiff, PDF, ...) and all the
>> other scanning options directly at the device and in
>> particular one can specify an e-mail address to which
>> the device will send the scanned image file so that one
>> will receive the scanned image as a mail attachment
>> according to what was specified as image file format.
>>
>> This way of operating is usually much more convenient
>> for the user because when you would use a SANE backend
>> you would have to specify all the scanning parameters
>> on your workstation by using a SANE frontend.
>> But your workstation is normally far away from the network
>> scanner device so that you would have to place a sheet in
>> the network scanner and post a big red note on the network
>> scanner that you are currently using it for scanning so that
>> others know what is going on and don't remove your sheet,
>> then walk back to your workstation to specify the scanning
>> parameters and start the scan and finally you would have
>> to walk again to the network scanner to fetch your sheet
>> and remove your note and walk back to your workstation.
>> Of course this way of operating is much better for the
>> physical health of the company staff ;-)
>>
>
> Yes, you are absolutely right! Operating scanner as you described is
> absolutely silly ans useless.
>
> Originally I thought about starting SANE (through a frontend) and telling
> it that images will be received from network scanner (of given type)
> sitting on given address. Then go to scanner and scan images one after
> another (with scanning parameters set on the scanner, as you wrote).
> SANE will wait and receive the scanned images as they go through the
> scanner. When I return back to the computer, there will be images opened
> in the frontent, ready to be saved to disc (or already saved in some
> temporary location ...).
> OK, there are some issues about "stealing" scanned images to others,
> when I would start SANE and another person starts scanning earlier than
> me. The question also is, is such solution is possible (may not be supported
> by network scanner machines).
>
> I ask, as just recently I tried to scan something, but I was not able
> to get images from the scanner (e.g. through e-mail, as you wrote).
> It seems that this e-mailing is not configured from some reasons, but
> I am not able to change it. I enden by deleting the images from scanner
> and asked someone to scan it for me to another day. I know that people
> using Windows have an application which allows a download of scanned
> images from the machine. But I do not know details about the app - should
> I try to get some more info?
>
> I was just thinking, if when it is possible to access scanner from Windows,
> if it is also possible (or planned) to access it from linux in the same
> (or preferrably better ;-)) way. If such possibility is still as silly
> as you described earlier, just write it to me and forget it ;-)

we have a big xerox scanner with a harddrive in it. when you scan, it
stores the images on disk, and you reach them thru a webserver that
runs on the machine. fujitsu's small network scanner seems to require
a windows server running a daemon to receive the images. other
machines use email. there is no reason that these things could not
also use linux, but you would need to do a bit of network sniffing,
and it would be very different for each machine type.

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