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/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 consti-
       tutes a valid device name.


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

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

       /usr/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 /etc/sane.d.	If the
	      value  of the environment variable ends with the directory sepa-
	      rator 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 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 1.0.18		  19 Nov 1998			sane-abaton(5)