[sane-devel] Epson dx4400 support for asus wl500g router

[Predrag Punosevac]

Alesh Slovak wrote:
> Unfortunately, Allan is right. The epkowa backend itself is open
> source and can be compiled for your ARM system. However, some
> devices require proprietary binary plug-ins and these are only 
> provided for ix86 and amd64 architectures. The DX4400 is one of
> these devices.

Hi Alesh,

I am sorry for this late replay to your message but usually I am just 
lurking around. Now, I want to actually ask a question.

What did you mean when you said that "epkowa backend itself is open 
source"? Did you mean compiles on Linux?

Epkowa fails miserably to compile on any Unix-es to my knowledge.
When I say Unix, I mean Solaris, HP-Unix, BSDs, AIX, Irix. The only
very limited success is the work of FreeBSD developer Luigi Rizzo who 
was able to port some very old version of Epkowa to FreeBSD. The 
compilation even of that source code fails miserably on my platform 
(OpenBSD)? And I am not talking here ARM, sparc, or God forbid mips64
architecture. I am talking about i386 crap. 

Does Epson corporation have a genuine interest in making Epkowa truly
open source or it is only PR stunt? I though Epson was in business of 
selling hardware not operating systems. That would be a truly sorry 
state of affairs as Epson in the past was a leader in producing good
hardware which worked on Unix. I have three scanners manufactured by 
Epson sitting this very moment next to me and happily working under 
OpenBSD including one connected to a SUN (sparc) Blade 1000.

On the top of that there is the problem that most newer Epson scanners
require also proprietary binary plug-in which of course is platform 
dependent unlike firmware. For all practical purposes that fact makes
most newer generation Epson scanners practically non-usable.

I do not want to sound like a troll. I am offering you a genuine help
to compile and debug Epkowa on OpenBSD (which would probably go long
way towards real portability i.e. being able to compile on all Unix-es).
In the light of new trend (mips64 based laptops) that could be of 
benefit to the corporation. Can you tell me the name of the person in 
the corporation whom should I contact about this. 


Most Kind Regards,
Predrag Punosevac

P.S. For starters could you tell me the exact version of GCC (or any 
other compiler that you guys are using) compiler used by Avasys
Corporation to produce Linux binaries. Can you produce those binaries
with older version of GCC? In particular most post 3.xxx version of GCC
are useless on non-wintel hardware.