A small comment regarding scanning "all pages" when scanning from ADF...
I agree that for the vast majority of scanning applications, scanning until
the ADF is empty is exactly what the user wants. However, there are common
variations...
In the production scanning world, group of pages to be scanned are sometimes
interspersed with separator pages on which information about what to do with
the group of pages is encoded. The scanners can actually decode the
separators and process the group accordingly.
Sorry if this adds more heat to the fire...
Tom Davis
-----Original Message-----
From: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frederik@remote.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 11:53 AM
To: sane-devel@mostang.com
Subject: Re: Writing Fujitsu M3091 backend
Hi,
sorry if by asking a few simple questions I have revived some old
feuds :-) I'm new to this list and don't know much about the personal,
or "cultural", side of the SANE project but it seems quite, errr,
interesting...
I'll tell you what my view is on this. Call it the "user's
perspective". I bought a scanner with ADF and duplex specifically
because I want to scan a large amount of stuff automatically.
I don't care for graphical front-ends because they usually involve
something called "mouse" which tends to be difficult to automate.
I want to put a stack of documents in the scanner, hit a button
(preferrably on the scanner, not the computer), have a cup of tea and
later find a bunch of files, neatly named "2001-03-01-doc1234-p2.tif"
or such, in a directory created for that purpose. (Ideally, I'd also
like the same file as .txt with a bit of auto-OCR thrown in but that's
not the scope of SANE - unfortunately.)
This is, of course, worlds away from the kind of scanning done on a
flatbed (or rotating drum) scanner by hobbyists or professionals,
where individual objects of different sizes are scanned, previews are
taken, windows defined, parameters tweaked, and so on. I just want the
stuff on my hard disk, and I might invest some time to find the best
settings but afterwards I want it to go through 1,000 pages without
fuss. (Yes, I know, my ADF only holds 50 pages but I didn't have the
money for the industrial version...)
If, every once in a while, I want to scan something using a graphical
front-end, I will probably just insert one single sheet into the ADF.
If the front-end, after scanning that one page, pops up a message
saying "ADF out of documents", that's not nice but not a big deal
either.
> Well, I never understood, why ADF should mean: "scan all documents".
> (even if it might be useful in some/most situations) There might be
> persons that put 50 documents in there doc feeder and then just want
> to scan 5 or 10, do something with the scans and then scan the next
> 5 or 10.
This is - pardon the expression - bullshit. Of course you're right
"theoretically", but - in my humble opintion - these "theoretically
right" things are exactly those that keep people from developing
practical applications. As I said, I got the ADF to scan a lot, and to
be honest I would prefer to define the amount of pages to be scanned
by inserting exactly that amount into the ADF, instead of having to
use a mouse/keyboard/whatever to tell some piece of software that,
yes, I have put 50 documents in the scanner but would it please, for
now, just scan the first 3 of it...
Just my 2 cents,
Frederik
-- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik@remote.org ## N57°48.10' W005°40.32'-- Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.mostang.com/sane/ To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe sane-devel | mail majordomo@mostang.com
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