[sane-devel] Sane API

Alexander Pevzner pzz at apevzner.com
Tue Oct 20 17:59:20 BST 2020


Hi Jürgen,

On 10/20/20 7:40 PM, Jürgen Mellinger wrote:
> I would like to add "mssing option to poll ADF state" to what is missing from the current API.
> With the current API, it is not possible to prompt the user with meaningful messages such as "please put a document into the ADF" vs "there is a paper jam in the ADF" and similar.

 From my experience with eSCL/WSD scanners
1) Polling current ADF state BEFORE scan attempt is not reliable
2) Reporting of ADF-related errors AFTER failed scan attempt is reliable

> —Juergen
> 
>> Am 20.10.2020 um 10:12 schrieb Alexander Pevzner <pzz at apevzner.com>:
>>
>> Hi Thierry,
>>
>> On 10/20/20 9:50 AM, Thierry HUCHARD wrote:
>>> I went to quickly look at sane-2.0: - I agree with @paddy-hack,
>>> making new with old is not necessarily a good thing! - I found that
>>> the difference was in the options. The operations are identical. It
>>> will be easy for a developer to create a gateway from sane-1.0 to
>>> sane-2.0. - The options are hardware dependent and there, some
>>> options are emulatable, others are not. - If sane-2.0 is just the
>>> formatting of the options, why not do it in sane-1.0?
>>
>> Current API misses some essential things, that cannot be implemented in terms of options:
>> - PnP notifications (scanner was connected/disconnected some time after
>> driver was initialized). This limitation can be worked around by
>> continuous poll, but this poll drains a battery a generates network/USB
>> traffic, so it is better to avoid.
>> - If some scanner is identified by multiple backends, it would be nice
>> to let user app to automatically choose one of the list. For this
>> purpose, it would be nice to expose some information regarding scanner
>> location, before scanner is opened (say, "USB bus X device Y, or NET
>> addr aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd). It requires adding extra fields to the
>> SANE_Device structure, which makes it incompatible with SANE 1.0
>>
>> For the following things we just don't have appropriate SANE_Value_Type:
>> - Scanner resolution if a form of X*Y pair. This is important, to
>> support "asymmetrical" resolutions (300*600, for example)
>>
>> For the following options we don't have enough discipline:
>> - SANE_NAME_SCAN_SOURCE. There is no common names for ADF simplex/ADF duplex, ADF front/ADF back
>>
>> sane_airscan_get_parameters() must be accurate immediately after return from sane_start(). It is not always possible, unless sane_start() has to wait until image is available (compare sane-escl and sane-airscan approach).
>>
>> sane_airscan_get_select_fd() defined with serious mistake: it requires backend to close select_fd immediately after completion or cancellation of the scan job. In multi-threaded program closed file descriptor could be immediately reused for some different purpose by another thread.
>>
>> There is no possibility to request image in the device-specific "raw" format. I.e., if I want PDF and device can return PDF, image still will be repacked PDF->sane format->PDF.
>>
>> My list is most likely very incomplete.
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> 	Wishes, Alexander Pevzner (pzz at apevzner.com)
>>
> 
> 


-- 

	Wishes, Alexander Pevzner (pzz at apevzner.com)



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