sane-pint.5

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

NAME

       sane-pint - SANE backend for scanners that use the PINT device driver

DESCRIPTION

       The sane-pint library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) back-
       end that provides generic access  to  hand-held  and  flatbed  scanners
       using  the  PINT (PINT Is Not Twain) device driver.  The PINT driver is
       being actively developed on the OpenBSD platform, and has  been  ported
       to a few other *nix-like operating systems.

       PINT  is  designed  to  provide an ioctl(2) interface to many different
       scanner types.  However, this backend has only been tested with flatbed
       single-pass scanners, and more work will probably be required to get it
       to use other scanner types successfully.

       If have successfully used the PINT driver with  your  scanner,  but  it
       does not work using this SANE backend, please let us know.  To do this,
       send a mail with the relevant information for  your  scanner  to  sane-
       devel@lists.alioth.debian.org.    Have   a   look  at  http://www.sane-
       project.org/mailing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel.

DEVICE NAMES

       This backend expects device names of the form:

              special

       Where special is the UNIX path-name for the special device that  corre-
       sponds  to  the scanner.  The special device name must be a PINT device
       or a symlink to such a device.  For example, under NetBSD  or  OpenBSD,
       such a device name could be /dev/ss0 or /dev/scan0.

CONFIGURATION

       The  contents  of  the  pint.conf.  file is a list of device names that
       correspond to PINT scanners.  Empty lines and  lines  starting  with  a
       hash mark (#) are ignored.  A sample configuration file is shown below:

              /dev/scanner
              # this is a comment
              /dev/ss1

FILES

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

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

       /usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-pint.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_PINT
              If  the  library  was  compiled with debug support enabled, this
              environment variable controls the debug level for this  backend.
              E.g.,  a  value  of 128 requests all debug output to be printed.
              Smaller levels reduce verbosity.

SEE ALSO

       sane(7)

AUTHOR

       Gordon Matzigkeit, adapted from existing backends written by David Mos-
       berger.

BUGS

       There  are  minor roundoff errors when adjusting the ranges, since PINT
       uses units of 1/1200 of an inch, and SANE  normally  uses  millimeters.
       Symptoms  of  these  errors  are  skewed images.  This should really be
       fixed (no pun intended) as soon as possible, but I just don't know/care
       enough  about fixed-point representation and roundoff errors to do this
       correctly.  Workaround: use inches as the scanning unit, and everything
       usually works fine.

       The  PINT  0.5e  interface  does  not  provide a way to determine valid
       ranges for DPI, modes, and scan sizes.  So, the  SANE  backend  queries
       the  PINT  device,  and  dynamically  discovers valid ranges by doing a
       binary search.  This means that the driver takes longer  to  initialize
       than seems necessary.

       Resetting  the  scanner  does  not  seem to work (at least not on my HP
       ScanJet 4p).  For that reason, the driver sends  a  SCIOCRESTART,  then
       gobbles up any remaining input until it hits EOF.

       Not  all  of  the  scanners have been identified (i.e. whether they are
       flatbed or handheld).

       X and Y resolutions are assumed to be the same.

       No testing has been done on three-pass or handheld  scanners,  or  with
       Automatic Document Feeder support.

sane-backends 1.0.18              13 May 1998                     sane-pint(5)