From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>
Message-ID: <3B5C2D49.F895C3E1@null.net>
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References: <20010723023521.3EC09199EB@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] scanner support
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:06:25 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: d462295a-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

David Gordon Hogan wrote:
> 'From' memory, the SCSI-2 standard (somewhat stupidly) only specifies
> how to get data from scanners, and says nothing about the format of
> the data itself.

That's not particularly stupid -- 9P specifies how to get data but
not the format of the data itself.

> So every scanner does things differently.  To `solve' this problem,
> each scanner comes with a driver which understands the data format
> (I think the name `TWAIN' has something to do with this).

There have been a few different approaches, but TWAIN is the one
I recommend.  TWAIN developer libraries are available for Windows
and I *think* for UNIX.  The general idea is that the scanner
process is a server.