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
       support for it. Have a look at
       http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-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
       constitutes a valid device name.


FILES
       /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
              configuration file is searched in two default directories:
              first, the current working directory (".") and then in
              /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 directories.  For
              example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would result
              in directories "tmp/config", ".", and "/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
              reasonable 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.



                                  11 Jul 2008                   sane-abaton(5)
