Re: Scanner and Printer - Copier

David Mosberger-Tang (davidm@azstarnet.com)
Wed, 14 May 1997 17:43:42 -0700

>>>>> On Wed, 14 May 1997 19:07:14 +0200 (MET DST), becka@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de said:

>> i am wondering if there is a simple way to copy something with scanner
>> and printer. It would be nice to have a copy button in sane or just a
>> simple new frontend.

Andy> Adding such a function to an existing frontend shouldn't be hard.
Andy> scanimage should do when used in a pipe like
Andy> scanimage $* | ppmtops | lpr

Exactly right. The power of Unix... ;-)

Andy> The x-based frontends could do the same by writing output to a
Andy> pipe. Please note, that this will cause problems with
Andy> 3-pass-scanners, as they will want to seek on the output-file
Andy> to make a correct PPM.

Right, which is something I'd rather prefer to avoid. The GIMP is the
right solution here, IMHO (though I think the GIMP is currently
lacking in its ability to print images, but that's just another
plug-in, after all).

Andy> Another simple solution would be to have a configureable
Andy> "commands-menu" which can be used to do different things on
Andy> the output-file. I think of something along the lines of

Andy> XView : xview %f - xview gets started when Menu-Item is selected
Andy> Print : ppmtops %f | lpr - print the last scan
Andy> ToGif : ppmtops %f >%f.gif - convert to gif
Andy> ...

I kind of like this idea. This might be useful to people that don't
want to use the GIMP. I'd love to see this implemented for
stand-alone mode. Doesn't seem very difficult either. As a minor
nit, it seems to me it would be more natural if those command buttons
would both _scan_ and _process_ image (through a user-defined pipe).

On the note of implementing things: due to other commitments, I won't
be able to implement any (non-trivial) new features over the next
couple of months (after that, I'll be getting a Real Job and it's not
clear yet what's going to happen, but I'll definitively try to make
time for SANE). However, in the meantime, I do promise to integrate
"good" patches and make bug fixes etc as time permits.

--david

--
Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux/sane/
To unsubscribe: mail -s unsubscribe sane-devel-request@listserv.azstarnet.com