[Sussex] Baby Driver

[Geoff Teale]

> Hi Geoff

Hi Angelo,

Isn't the title a Simon and Garfunkel song?
 
> I downloaded a driver for my Artec Ultima 2000 scanner.  
> There is an 'ALPHA'
> driver for this scanner under development but working.  It also has an
> userspace app that unfortunately creates PMN files?  Anyhow I don't
> recognise these (maybe the Gimp may load them and convert to 
> JPG so that
> they are portable to my non-linux mates.  What do you think?

Simple answer.. I've no idea - I've never seen a PMN file either..GIMP is
your best bet (it supports anything that isn't completely proprietary and
doesn't require a license fee to be paid (hence no GIF)).

***NOTE***

A quick conversation with Angelo has uncovered the the file format in
question is not PMN, but actually PNG.. OK, we know PNG "Portable Network
Graphic".. PNG is the only W3C approved bitmapped graphic format for web
pages (that's right folks, anyone using JPEG's or worse still GIF's on their
web pages can strip that W3C compliant icon off the bottom of the page
straight away!).

..course anyone with anysense should be working towards presenting their
graphical information as SVG's these days..

> Second question: would the userspace app from the install 
> disk of the Ultima
> recognise and use the above driver?  Maybe not, as all this 
> stuff happens at
> quite a low level?

Do you mean the Window's app?  I would think not Wine (and thus CrossOver
office) relies heavily on simulating a windows environment for applications
to run in - this goes write down to physically implementing the file system
and such like.  I find it unlikely that the driver infrastructure will be
supported because, while the DLL's can be installed in the pseudo files
system, the calls they make to the Windows kernel are dodgy ground for WINE.

As far as scanning in LINUX is concerned - if you can get LINUX specific
software from the vendor - great - hopefully there is someway of getting
those files into other packages!

Otherwise SANE is the informal standard for all scanning in LINUX.  Scanner
specific driving happens in userland, as far as LINUX is concerned it is
just a USB/SCSI/Parallel device.  If you are looking to intigrate scanning
into GIMP or any other generic LINUX software you need to get it up and
running in SANE.

Unfortunately Scanners generally fall into a class of device that has become
very popular in since the mid 1990's.  The home "Multimedia and Internet"
boom set up a market for cheap devices for home users with little technical
know-how.  IN order to cut costs companies relied on generic lowlevel comms
drivers and wrote the functionality into high level programs - generally
these programs only run on Windows.  This category includes:

* Software or "Win" Modems
* Scanners
* A lot of cheap digital cameras
* Photo quality printers

A lot of work has been done to bring these kind of devices to the LINUX
platform, and luckily this trend seems to be in decline as standards emerge
for accesing USB devices.  If you scanner is not supported by SANE your best
bet is to let the people at SANE know an  give them some tech specs.  

If you're really generous you could even donate a scanner to the project -
or better still sit down and try to do the work necessary yourself - I know
this isn't typical user experience in the Windows world, but this is what
LINUX is all about - it is a community project (or collection thereoff) for
the benefit of every man woman and child on the planet.  We get out of it
what we put into it, and we do it because we don't want to live our lives as
slaves of huge corporations just because we happen to need to use computers
in our daily lives.

THe two best known arguements made in support of this idea are the GNU
Manifesto:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

.. (and of course the GPL) and Donald E Knuth's letter to the US Patent
office:

http://www.pluto.linux.it/meeting/meeting1999/atti/no-patents/brevetti/docs/
knuth_letter_en.html


- Geoff

-- 
GJT
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk





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