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

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

       /usr/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 /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_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)