Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 23:46:37 -0600 (CST) From: Henry Miller <hank@black-hole.com> To: brian@worldcontrol.com Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: USB, scanners, and SANE? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981220233633.30140A-100000@daphne.bogus> In-Reply-To: <19981220031221.A972@top.worldcontrol.com>
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This was discussed on the sane mailing lists last month, and the
concessious was USB support is desirable, but today there are several
problems. a) nobody with an interest in writting a scanner backend has a
USB scanner, b) the lack of stable implimentations of USB and unix.
a) is the biggest thing getting in the way, but that is expected to
change over the next year or so. I encourage you to get involved and
write the backend.
b) will be a big deal. The goal is to have standard functions for
accessing the USB port, similear to what sane does for scsi. Before work
in that direction can procede the operating systems SANE runs on need USB
support. NetBSD is the only one that has USB support. FreeBSD and Linux
were both noted as making progress, but not yet to the point where anyone
can truely belive that they won't change their API 10 times a month for
the next few months. Obviously things will settle down (and probably
won't get that bad) but today the implimentation isn't truely ready for
others to write protable programs on top of.
on the other hand, b) should be solved in the next few months. (and if
you read -current you probably know the state of USB in freeBSD, which is
progressing nicely) Once the OS level implimentations are stable, SANE
will write a wrapper API, and then things will be ready for a backends.
You can short circuite this process, like the parrell drivers do, but
remember that parrell scanners are generally unsupported, and considering
manufactures additude always will be. USB scanners probably will be
supported, therefore if you write something plan time to re-write it to a
standard when sane releases one.
Good luck!
On Sun, 20 Dec 1998 brian@worldcontrol.com wrote:
> I've been poking around the USB website and seperatedly
> noted the addition of support for USB under -current.
>
> Reading the www.usb.org site I mostly got the sense of Plug&Pray.
> Basically, plug it in, don't worry be happy.
>
> My wife as a HP Scanjet 4100CXI on her PC running [censored].
>
> I'd like to take a stab at getting it to work under FreeBSD.
> I'm not above writing code.
>
> SANE has support for HP scanners of both SCSI and parallel port
> versions.
>
> Via the existing FreeBSD USB support will it be possible for me
> to create a communication channel for the SANE backend to talk
> to the scanner?
>
> HIDs and Classes (was it?) have me worried that I have to wait
> for particular support for scanner class devices. But on the
> other hand, maybe this is not that case, and perhaps I can use
> some generic interface to access the scanner.
>
> Any pointers or clarification on the FreeBSD USB interface
> would be appreciated.
>
> --
> Brian Litzinger <brian@litzinger.com>
>
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--
http://blugill.home.ml.org/
hank@black-hole.com
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