[sane-devel] searching for business card scanner compatible with sane

[m. allan noah]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Jelle de Jong
<jelledejong at powercraft.nl> wrote:

>> All fujitsu scanners internally consider the 'front' of the paper to
>> be the side which touches the paper tray. Is this not the case for the
>> s1500?
>
> Yes the front is the side which touches the paper tray and the
> beginning seems to be the point where scanning starts. This means you
> have to turn the paper on top and rotate the front to back before
> placing the paper in the tray. This is really counter intuitive. Is
> this hard coded in the firmware of the scanner or something of the
> device driver?

With most image formats, the data is drawn starting from the top of
the image. This means you have to put the top into the scanner first.
Back vs front terminology is in the firmware. This is standard in
every ADF scanner or fax machine I have ever used, except a couple of
HP AIOs.

>>>> # bug02:
>>>> It seems "ADF Back" and "ADF Front" are outputing something that is
>>>> not on the original paper, only "ADF Duplex" seem to work here...
>>
>> I would need a sample image. Are you sure you are running libsane 1.0.20?
>
> I tried to reproduce the results I encountered yesterday, but the
> scanner is now responding in a different way. (see the attachment)

Did you connect the scanner to a windows machine in between these two
tests? It is possible the windows driver updated the firmware...

>>>> # bug03:
>>>> It seems around 15mm of text is missing from the bottom of all pages
>>>> when trying to scan simple A4 pages. Page geometry: 5096x6600+0+0
>>
>> please use the page width and page height options to set the actual
>> size of the paper. if you are using a command line program, you should
>> set those options before you set the x/y image size.
>
> The datasheet(1) is saying it can scan A4 paper and automatically
> recognizes document size, is this not supported in the device driver?

the 'datasheet' does not describe the hardware, but rather the
hardware+windows device driver. Some features, like auto cropping are
software only features. This is common. You need a very smart ($1000+)
machine to do this in hardware. That said- the git development branch
of sane-backends does have a first attempt at a software
implementation of these features.

> Is it really that hard to scan A4 paper with a more then 500 Euro
> scanner? So far I only have been trying to get the basis functionality
> of the 100 Euro all in one HP scanner that I previous used, let alone
> get the functionality I really wanted like automatic different size
> business card scanning. Am I now just bitching and making no sense or
> is there something wrong? I know I am a perfectionist but I need it
> for the quality of the work I do.

You are overreacting a bit, yes. It is not particularly hard to set an
extra page-length option. I could have set the default to A4 length,
but I'm in the US :)

[snip]

> # bug04: Is the driver unable to detect and A4 paper size? Why is it not detecting the input size of the paper by the settings of the sliders?

The sliders are not connected to any kind of sensors, and besides,
they are width sliders, not length sliders :)

[snip]

> # ok this scan has the original data, but it also as a large back bar on the botom of the page,

'large'? it is only a few mm tall...

> $ scanadf --device-name 'net:192.168.1.1:fujitsu:ScanSnap S1500:14033' --output-file /home/jelle/image-adf-back-0001.pbm --source 'ADF Back' --resolution 600 --mode Lineart
> Scanned document /home/jelle/image-adf-back-0001.pbm
> scanadf: sane_start: Error during device I/O
> Error during device I/O
> Scanned 1 pages
>
> # bug05: everytime i try to scan with the the above command the process freezes, i need to press the poweron/poweroff button to make the system responsable again.

Hmm- perhaps the S1500 will not let you scan only the backside. There
is an override to remove this option, but it has to be hardcoded for
each machine based on user reports, as there is no way to detect it.

[snip]

> Scanned document /home/jelle/image-adf-duplex-0001.pbm
> Scanned document /home/jelle/image-adf-duplex-0002.pbm
> Scanned 2 pages
>
> # big black bars on the bottom of the pages, unusable for archiving and unprofessional for sending to other business partners

big? wow, you are hard to please :) You could try the current
development version of sane, and see if the software based cropping
and length detection features help. If not, we accept patches...

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