Re: Starting a discussion about SANE and TWAIN...

Petter Reinholdtsen (pere@hungry.com)
Wed, 11 Aug 1999 18:37:15 +0200

I'm not central to SANE development, but would like to contribute my
thoughts on this topic.

If I'm not mistaken, the TWAIN specifies both API and GUI, while SANE
only specifies the API part. If this assumption holds, I believe the
best way to develop a TWAIN "frontend" to SANE is by separating the
TWAIN API AND GUI to be able to share code base on all platforms for
the API, and write platform specific code for different GUI.

Both the SANE API and the TWAIN API should be available for programs.

I suggest this separation of code:

+---------+-------+----+
| SANE | TWAIN | GUI|
| front- | API +----+
| end | |
+---------+------------+
| SANE backends |
+----------------------+

The good thing about this separation is that there is only one driver
for each scanner, and you only have to set up scanner configuration
once pr. site or host. It will also make it possible to do separate
development on SANE and TWAIN libraries.

Win32 boxes will only need the net backend to access remote scanners
available from unix, and TWAIN programs only need to port the
non-twain part of the code to work on Unix. Porting SANE to Win32
should be a relatively easy job using GNU libtool and CygWin to
generate the shared libraries.

Arun Tanksali announced 1999-01-04 that Integra had a functional TWAIN
driver. Check out his message on
<URL:http://www.mostang.com/mail-archive/sane-devel/1999-01/0046.html>.
Unfortunately, I have never been able to get it to work. The source
seem to lack the TWAIN part, so there is no way of knowing what is
wrong. :-(

Brian Macy is working on an open source Win32 client. The goal is
making a TWAIN driver, but he don't have any specification on how
TWAIN works. <URL:http://www.sunshinecomputing.com/winsane/>

-- 
##>  Petter Reinholdtsen <##    | pere@td.org.uit.no
 O-  <SCRIPT Language="Javascript">window.close()</SCRIPT>
http://www.hungry.com/~pere/    | Go Mozilla, go! Go!

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