Hi, I recently bought a Dell 1600n network printer/scanner/fax/copier. The printer function works fine with linux as a generic postscript device. Network scanning is Windows only. It also has a USB interface although I haven't tried it (the only Windows machine I have with a USB port runs NT4 and besides my printer lives in a cupboard a long way from from the computers)
Having spent some time with ethereal I have a working proof-of-concept driver for network scanning, written as a little perl script (it supports colour scanning in JPEG format - monochrome in PDF/TIFF requires some more messing about with file headers). I thought that the next obvious step would be to write a SANE driver. I have never used SANE before (I have never owned a scanner before) but looking through the SANE docs I don't see any other network scanners listed which I might use as a starting point. Additionally I wonder how well this scanner will fit into the SANE framework: My (newbie) understanding of SANE is that it provides a standard API to a raster device whereby the caller initiates a scan and then reads back the raw raster data? The Dell 1600n network scanning works in the following way: - driver locates scanner by listening for multicast messages (In Windows this is a "one off" when you set up your Dell 1600n) - driver registers with scanner by sending a UDP message - person walks up to scanner, presses "scan" button and selects named driver from a list of available ones (those which have registered) - scanner sends driver UDP message asking for a TCP connection - driver opens TCP connection to printer and sends its preferred format (eg: monochrome PDF 200 dpi) - person optionally selects actual desired format at scanner panel (eg: colour JPEG 200 dpi) - person selects "start scanning" at scanner panel - scanner sends data to driver in JPEG/PDF/TIFF format. - person optionally answers "yes" to "more documents" prompt - scanner either closes TCP connection or sends more data Is this behaviour suitable for a SANE backend? Thanks for any insights. cheers, Jon ps: please CC replies via email - I am about to go on holiday for a couple of weeks and may temporarily unsubscribe from the list in order to limit the backlog of email awaiting me on my return! Thanks. ====================== Jon Chambers ===================== http://www.jon.demon.co.uk, 020 8575 7097, 07969 956575 =========================================================
