Thanks to Nick and Abel for explaining some background to me.
While I agree that the use of parallel port and USB scanners is important to
the "low-end" Linux home users, of which there are clearly a large number
enjoying their membership of the "GNU generation", I think there is a
compelling argument for supporting the departmental and high-end SCSI
scanners as used by corporate users too.
More and more the press is focussed on the transition of Linux from a
backyard hobbyist toy into serious corporate datacentre application.
Nowadays, Linux receives very positive press regarding its ability to fulfil
all sorts of corporate roles, besides just being a cute and cheap system
running the Apache web server. The "big iron" hardware manufacturers like
IBM and Compaq, and major software vendors like Oracle are taking Linux
seriously enough to devote resources to Linux product development.
Where scanning is concerned, SANE is really *THE* enabling technology for
Linux (and a number of other Unixes too). The commercial offerings are few
and far between.
Rather than putting our heads in the sand and pretending the more "serious"
scanners don't exist, at the very least we should work to ensure that there
is room to grow SANE to support them. If that means some tweaks to the
interface are required, then we need to consider that on its merits. If it
doesn't affect 95% of SANE's users, but can be implemented without breaking
any functionality, then we should consider doing it.
I'm not suggesting that hundreds of people rush to support the needs of just
a few "high end" users - I'm prepared to do my part to support the effort so
that all can enjoy the benefits.
Just for a moment, imagine if Linus had limited Linux to running on 286
architecture using ST-506 MFM hard drives with no more than 20Mb capacity
and EGA monitors ...
If SANE is going to be stagnate, we might as well re-name it to "in-SANE !",
or "mun-DANE" or "down-the-DRAIN".
My $0.02
Jason
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Lamb [mailto:njl98r@ecs.soton.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, 6 February 2001 11:40
To: sane-devel@mostang.com
Subject: Re: Getting compressed B/W image data from Fujitsu M3096GXm
scann er
On Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 11:12:21PM +0100, abel deuring wrote:
> in July or August 1999 was a larger discussion on the Sane mailing list
> about a new version of the Sane standard, including the question about
> more data formats. Technically quite interesting, I think. Unfortunately
> the debate ended up in some not very polite arguments. Since this time,
> nobody dared to pick up the topic again.
While it's a convenient excuse that I killed this discussion because
my arguments about the technical content were too much, I think it's
more the case that 99% of list members neither know about nor care about
this stuff. They're mostly looking for simple scanner support for
~$100 scanners which will get their photos or documents into Linux.
We get two or three people a year looking for G3 or JPEG in SANE, versus
two a week wanting support for obscure $50 parport scanners. The result
is that not a lot of work is getting done on SANE 2.0, although I did
finally complete my transfer mini-thesis so I might have more time now.
Nick.
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