[sane-devel] Epson2 backend and ADF

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Michael Koltan writes:

> Am 19.08.2013 02:56, schrieb Olaf Meeuwissen:
>>
>> Michael Koltan writes:
>>
>>> Am 03.08.2013 05:28, schrieb Olaf Meeuwissen:
>>>>
>>>> Olaf Meeuwissen writes:
>>>>> Precompiled binaries are available from:
>>>>>
>>>>>     http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/search/01/search/?OSC=LX
>>>
>>> The binaries didn't install because of a missing dependency,
>>
>> Which one?
>
> Asking the question was to solve it. The missing dependency was ltdl3 
> and when I looked at the filename which explicitely stated, that it was 
> compiled for ltdl3 I devined, that there is probably a binary for ltdl7. 
> This installs flawlessly.

Good.
# I am well aware that the Epson download page could use some
# improvement but that's beyond my control.  That said, there
# is of course this FAQ[1]
#
#  [1] http://download.ebz.epson.net/faq/linux/faq_ls_00002.html

>>> [...] until I realized, I was fighting with a hardware problem, not a
>>> software problem. After solving the problem with the adf, the epkowa
>>> driver now works perfectly without any changes! Thank you very much.
>>
>> Care to explain the hardware problem briefly?
>
> In fact there were two problems. First: The transport belt of the ADF 
> gets slightly stuck when it is not used for several days. It is easy to 
> solve this if you just move it some centimeters, but we didn't realize 
> this for weeks.
> I had the suspicion, that I was fighting against a hardware problem, so 
> I made a second mistake: Since we own two GT-10000+ I put the ADF from 
> one scanner to the other without realizing, that there is some rail 
> installed at the scanner (not the ADF) to guide the paper. So the 
> scanner did some very funny things with the paper.
> Installing the ADF back to the first scanner and slightly moving the 
> transport belt before scanning worked miracles after weeks of frustration.

Ouch.  I've had a similar experience where I didn't realize the carriage
was locked.  Turned out the one of the "feet" at the bottom of the
scanner did double duty as a lock ... :-/

>>> I am now trying to change the epson2 driver accordingly; since the
>>> epkowa driver supports the nifty feature to determine automatically the
>>> scan area for paper from the adf I will try to incorporate this in the
>>> epson2 driver.
>>
>> Why bother if you can just use the epkowa driver?
>> # I'm solliciting user input here.  I can think of a few reasons myself
>> # but I'd like to back them up with user feedback.
>
> First of all, I think, sane should work out of the box and that you 
> shouldn't have to install third party modules. Most users will give up 
> frustrated when they install sane, get their scanner working somehow 
> (with the epson2 backend) and then realize, that features are missing. 
> Most users won't google around and search if there is another backend 
> they might install. I would think that at that point about 90% of the 
> users are giving up. This is bad advertising for open source software.

First of, thanks for the feedback.

I agree with your "working out of the box" statement.  Unfortunately it
is next to impossible to add support for devices that hit the market
after a distribution has been released.  The same can be said for the
sane-backends releases.  Telling users to get the sources from the git
repository and compile is a far cry from "working out of the box".  A
third party package, released independently from the sane-backends and
distribution release cycles, may be a fair deal closer.

# Personally, I would much like to be able to add a package repository
# for iscan to my APT/RPM configuration.  That way all dependencies will
# be taken care of and you can easily check for upgrades.

> Secondly I'm not sure how long Epson will provide the epkowa backend for 
> newer versions of linux. There is always a chance, that it will disappear.

The epkowa backend is free software.  Anyone can rebuild against newer
versions of their favourite distribution.  Of course, that isn't quite
the same as "works out of the box".  If you are concerned that it might
disappear, anyone can put it on a place like Debian's alioth, github,
bitbucket, sourceforge or wherever.

> And then I have at least one of the virtues of a good programmer: I'm 
> lazy. If I have fixed the epson2 backend, further updates will require 
> much less work. And programming is much more fun (if you aren't stuck 
> with hardware problems) than searching for additional packages on the 
> internet.

Seeing that you already had downloaded the iscan packages before fixing
the epson2 backend, you could have been a lot lazier ;-)
# I also tend to dive into the sources before doing a good search, so no
# offense.

> Thanks again for your help

You're welcome.
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2           FLOSS Engineer -- AVASYS CORPORATION
FSF Associate Member #1962               Help support software freedom
                 http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=1962