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# sane-abaton.5

    sane-abaton(5)           SANE Scanner Access Now Easy           sane-abaton(5)

## NAME

           sane-abaton - SANE backend for Abaton flatbed scanners

## DESCRIPTION

           The  sane-abaton  library  implements  a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)
           backend that provides access to Abaton flatbed  scanners.  At  present,
           only the Scan 300/GS (8bit, 256 levels of gray) is fully supported, due
           to the absence of programming information.  The Scan 300/S  (black  and
           white) is recognized, but support for it is untested.

           If you own a Abaton scanner other than the ones listed above that works
           with this backend, or if you own an Abaton scanner that does  not  work
           with  this  backend,  please contact sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
           with the model number, so that arrangements can be made to include sup-
           port   for   it.   Have  a  look  at  http://www.sane-project.org/mail-
           ing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel.

           Abaton is out of business, and these  scanners  are  not  supported  by
           Everex  (the  parent  company  of Abaton), nor is there any programming
           information to be found.  This driver is therefore based on information
           obtained  by running Abaton's scanning desk accessory under MacsBug and
           tracing the MacOS SCSI Manager calls it made during image  acquisition.

           However,  the  protocol is very similar to, though not compatible with,
           the one used by the Apple scanners, therefore, if this backend is  ever
           extended  to  support  the  other Abaton models (they also made a color
           flatbed scanner), it may be possible to fill in some  "missing  pieces"
           from the (quite detailed) Apple scanner documentation.

## DEVICE NAMES

           This backend expects device names of the form:

                  special

           Where  special is the path-name for the special device that corresponds
           to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the special device name must be a
           generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device.  Under Linux, such a
           device name takes a format such as /dev/sga or /dev/sg0,  for  example.
           See sane-scsi(5) for details.

## CONFIGURATION

           The  contents  of  the  abaton.conf file is a list of device names that
           correspond to Abaton scanners.  Empty lines and lines starting  with  a
           hash mark (#) are ignored.  See sane-scsi(5) on details of what consti-
           tutes a valid device name.

## FILES

           /usr/local/etc/sane.d/abaton.conf
                  The  backend  configuration  file  (see  also   description   of
                  SANE_CONFIG_DIR below).

           /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-abaton.a
                  The static library implementing this backend.

           /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-abaton.so
                  The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems
                  that support dynamic loading).

## ENVIRONMENT

           SANE_CONFIG_DIR
                  This environment variable specifies the list of directories that
                  may contain the configuration file.  Under UNIX, the directories
                  are separated by a colon (`:'), under OS/2, they  are  separated
                  by a semi-colon (`;').  If this variable is not set, the config-
                  uration file is searched in two default directories: first,  the
                  current     working     directory     (".")    and    then    in
                  /usr/local/etc/sane.d.  If the value of the environment variable
                  ends  with  the  directory separator character, then the default
                  directories are searched after the explicitly specified directo-
                  ries.   For  example,  setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:"
                  would   result   in   directories   "tmp/config",    ".",    and
                  "/usr/local/etc/sane.d" being searched (in this order).

           SANE_DEBUG_ABATON
                  If  the  library  was  compiled with debug support enabled, this
                  environment variable controls the debug level for this  backend.
                  E.g.,  a  value  of 255 requests all debug output to be printed.
                  Smaller levels reduce verbosity.

## BUGS

           There are a few known ones, and definitely some unknown ones.

           Scan area miscalculations
                  For the sake of programmer efficiency, this backend handles  all
                  measurements  in  millimetres,  and  floors (rather than rounds)
                  values to  avoid  possible  damage  to  the  scanner  mechanism.
                  Therefore,  it  may not be possible to scan to the extreme right
                  or bottom edges of the page.

           Cancelling the scan
                  This might not work correctly, or it might abort  the  frontend.
                  The former is more likely than the latter.

           If  you have found something that you think is a bug, please attempt to
           recreate it with the SANE_DEBUG_ABATON environment variable set to 255,
           and  send  a  report  detailing  the  conditions surrounding the bug to
           sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org.

## TODO

           Implement non-blocking support

           Finish reverse-engineering the MacOS driver
                  This will allow me to add support for other models with  reason-
                  able  confidence  that it will work, as well as to fully exploit
                  the information returned by the INQUIRY command.

## SEE ALSO

           sane(7), sane-scsi(5), scanimage(1)

## AUTHOR

           The sane-abaton backend was partially written by David  Huggins-Daines,
           based on the sane-apple backend by Milon Firikis.

    sane-backends 1.0.12-cvs          19 Nov 1998                   sane-abaton(5)