I have an Epson TX110 which was supposedly only supported by epkowa. I had major problems with epkowa - crashing freezing etc.
I now use the epson2 driver for sane and the TX109 Gutenprint driver for cups. Had no problems since. I had to play with the detection settings is all. /etc/sane.d/epson2.conf usb 0x4b8 0x84d Alesh Slovak wrote: > Hi, > > Predrag Punosevac wrote: > >> What did you mean when you said that "epkowa backend itself is open >> source"? Did you mean compiles on Linux? > The epkowa backend is a fork of the epson backend and it is licensed > under the GPL + SANE exception just like any other SANE backend. It > does also happen to compile on Linux. The frontend and the binary > plugins are, of course, another story. > > My statement that "The epkowa backend ... can be compiled for your ARM > system" is misleading. What I really meant was since the source code > is available, it should be possible to compile for ARM with some work. > However, we have never tried it ourselves. > >> Epkowa fails miserably to compile on any Unix-es to my knowledge. >> When I say Unix, I mean Solaris, HP-Unix, BSDs, AIX, Irix. The only >> very limited success is the work of FreeBSD developer Luigi Rizzo who >> was able to port some very old version of Epkowa to FreeBSD. The >> compilation even of that source code fails miserably on my platform >> (OpenBSD)? And I am not talking here ARM, sparc, or God forbid mips64 >> architecture. I am talking about i386 crap. > As a developer, I am interested in supporting operating systems other > than Linux. We try to keep portability in mind, but only actively > compile on Linux, so incompatibilities are bound to creep in. You are > welcome to send us logs or even better, patches. However, I cannot > guarantee that any patches we receive will be integrated. > > One thing to keep in mind is that the frontend requires a binary blob > that is provided only for Linux systems. On non-Linux systems you will > only be able to compile the epkowa backend. You can disable the > compilation of the frontend with: ./configure --disable-frontend > >> Does Epson corporation have a genuine interest in making Epkowa truly >> open source or it is only PR stunt? I though Epson was in business of >> selling hardware not operating systems. That would be a truly sorry >> state of affairs as Epson in the past was a leader in producing good >> hardware which worked on Unix. I have three scanners manufactured by >> Epson sitting this very moment next to me and happily working under >> OpenBSD including one connected to a SUN (sparc) Blade 1000. > Again, the epkowa backend is a fork of the epson backend and is > licensed under the GPL + SANE exception. > >> On the top of that there is the problem that most newer Epson scanners >> require also proprietary binary plug-in which of course is platform >> dependent unlike firmware. For all practical purposes that fact makes >> most newer generation Epson scanners practically non-usable. > I'm afraid there is not much I can do about this. Officially > registering your complaint at our support site [1] may be one small > step towards convincing Epson to change this practice. To be fair, > scanners that require a binary plugin are in the minority by far. > >> I do not want to sound like a troll. I am offering you a genuine help >> to compile and debug Epkowa on OpenBSD (which would probably go long >> way towards real portability i.e. being able to compile on all Unix-es). >> In the light of new trend (mips64 based laptops) that could be of >> benefit to the corporation. > If you are interested in getting the epkowa backend compiling on > OpenBSD, you are free to hack on the source code and send us patches. > >> Can you tell me the name of the person in the corporation whom should >> I contact about this. > I'm afraid that the best I can do here is to once again point you to > our support site [1]. > >> P.S. For starters could you tell me the exact version of GCC (or any >> other compiler that you guys are using) compiler used by Avasys >> Corporation to produce Linux binaries. Can you produce those binaries >> with older version of GCC? In particular most post 3.xxx version of GCC >> are useless on non-wintel hardware. > Epkowa and the Image Scan! for Linux frontend have been compiled on > versions of GCC since 2.9. These days we compile binaries on Debian 4 > (GCC 4.1.1), Ubuntu 8.10 (GCC 4.3.1), Fedora 5 (GCC 4.1.0) and Fedora > 10 (4.3.2). We are also constantly compiling on Debian testing. The > oldest version of GCC that we've compiled with lately is 3.2.2 on Red > Hat 9 and that only required a few small fixes to get working. > > > [1] https://avasys.jp/eng/contact/inquiry/inq_form4_en.php > > Regards,
