Hi all, I have a scanner attached to a server (HP 2200C attached to a Linux Dell Server (Slackware 8.1), and the plustek backend seems to have some strange issues (especially with sanetwain).
1. The Scanner takes approx 40s to warm up the lamp, before it does anything - e.g. hit the preview button, wiat 50 secs, start receiving data, draw your box, hit the scan button, wait 50 secs, start receiving data. Is there really no way of receiving the temperature of the lamp, and not just switch it on and wait a pre-specified amount of time? 2. When propogated over the network, the scanner does scan, but the delay mentioned means that sanetwain just is not usable, I think because of a network timeout waiting for data. I can see several solutions to this, and will elucidate on the easy option and what I consider to be the Good (TM) option : a. (easy option) alter sanetwain to increase the timeout value b. (Good(tm) option) add to the network (and backend) protocol so that when the backend is waiting for something, it can be pinged (in the IP sense), to check it hasn't hanged. This probably involves lots of work, but would mean that the front ends could give a better clue as to what is happening - and maybe a status message could be passed (In this case "Lamp warming up") so that the user knows that the program hasn't locked up. Because this would change the protocol, sanetwain would have to be updated, and the network timeout would not be a problem (send ping packet, recieve pong packet). Okay, so thats my 2p worth, lets hear what other people think - and yes, you can flame me for offering design criticisms without offering to do any coding, but my skills at the coding level lie within the confines of Pascal, and not within networking (although I am getting better at it, it still foxes me sometimes). Martyn Ranyard Free Software Advocate jabber - [email protected] icq - 122500800 irc - Joran on oftc msn - [email protected] e - [email protected]
