I put up this plea for help and had no response but have now solved the problem (without fully diagnosing it, but never mind that!)
===== My F2280 was working happily both in printing and scanning until some time in March. I suspect a routine Synaptic Update made an unhelpful change, although I do not use the scanner often enough to be sure of the timing, but from about that time the scanner function has gone missing. Printing has not been affected. ===== The solution was that I had hplip version 2.8.2 installed and the hplip website says the minimum version for the F2280 is 2.8.6. I installed the latest (3.10.2) and all is now well. Mystery is that I had always had 2.8.2 installed, even when it was working before, so I suspect something in a routine Synaptic update had upset it.
