Slashdot Mirror

Also see this wiki for a discussion of various opinions on scanners.

And as with all hardware, I guess, make sure that it's compatible with Linux if you wish to run such a beast at a later date.

I didn't bother checking about my HP 36-something-something. I recently switched to using Ubuntu, and SANE won't touch my HP with a bargepole.

It works fairly well with Windows, but uses some ActiveX functionality for its document store/display which IE tends to worry about being a security issue. Might scare the uninitiated.

...I'd suggest a scanner that doesn't run exclusively on Windows, but one that is compatible with the SANE API (in case you can turn your sister from the dark side.)

Replace Windows 2000 Professional with Debian GNU/Linux.

Is there an update to Debian that lets SANE use a Microtek ScanMaker 4850 flatbed scanner? I'm afraid not.

If KDE isn't compatible with my scanner than it's a win for Microsoft.

Currently, Microsoft has the advantage in driver support from the manufacturers of PC peripherals. Many manufacturers refuse to port their drivers to a Free operating system and refuse further to disclose specifications that free software developers would find useful in writing a driver.

If you can find a negative scanner that works under Linux, then you will be halfway there

If you can find a negative scanner that works under Linux, then you will be halfway there

If you can find a negative scanner that works under Linux, then you will be halfway there

The focus and color problems you're having are not related to your choice of operating system or software, but with your scanner. If you can't get the slide adaptor to hold the slide so it's in focus, there's no chance of getting good scans regardless of the software you choose.

Like many folks here have said, you'll have a much better time using a real slide scanner. There's a good number of such devices supported by SANE - see http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices .html. You should be able to find some of the older ones are more affordable used (check eBay) and even though they're not cutting edge will still generate much better results than an adaptor on a flatbed.

Failing that, rent or borrow a good slide scanner, or have a service bureau scan your slides on their equipment.

Until just now, I didn't know that some scanner drivers can run in Wine. And how many versions will it take before the SANE team cracks the Microtek Scanmaker 4850 (which is probably a minor variation on this)?

I've thrown Knoppix in many machines, as experiments

I've tried it, and perhaps it was the CD-ROM overhead, but OpenOffice.org took inordinately long to start up, and perhaps it was the lack of an accelerated Radeon driver, but I could see the GUI being drawn line-by-line rather than instant rectfills.

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"

You claim there is no Access for Linux. Google for mdbtools

Does mdbtools have graphical schema, form, and report construction tools like M$ Access does? (looks at screenshot) No, a glorified terminal emulator that allows typing in SQL commands doesn't count as a GUI.

Second, WINE does Visual Basic rather well

Great. Now we can violate M$ EULAs that prohibit running covered products in any operating system but M$ Windows brand operating systems.

I have never had to replace any of my hardware because it was not supported under Linux.

You appear lucky. After over a year, SANE still lists Microtek Scanmaker 4800 family scanners as "unsupported" in red letters.

Some distros suck at recognizing some configurations, while another distro will recognize it without problems. A pain in the butt, but go figure.

You didn't mention which distro(s) you tried, but first try the Knoppix live CD here or here. Its hardware recognition is very good and if it recognizes your hardware, it takes about 20 minutes to install to your hard drive (YMMV).

Regarding printers. Some printers are better supported under Linux than others. Go here to see how well your printer is supported. Go here for more help.

Check your scanner compatibility here. And find more help here.

If you still can't get Linux to work, stick with windows, it's not that bad.

Some distros suck at recognizing some configurations, while another distro will recognize it without problems. A pain in the butt, but go figure.

You didn't mention which distro(s) you tried, but first try the Knoppix live CD here or here. Its hardware recognition is very good and if it recognizes your hardware, it takes about 20 minutes to install to your hard drive (YMMV).

Regarding printers. Some printers are better supported under Linux than others. Go here to see how well your printer is supported. Go here for more help.

Check your scanner compatibility here. And find more help here.

If you still can't get Linux to work, stick with windows, it's not that bad.

Unfortunately you don't have much use for something like Acrobat Capture because you have handwritten notes to deal with. To process the files, SANE and/or TWAIN interfaces are reasonably easy to write code for. The cool thing about SANE is that you can run the saned daemon on any Mac or Linux box, and with a couple of lines of config file changes, it's instantly available over the network from any Mac, Windows, or Unix box (there are TWAIN bridges for Mac/Windows so it even shows up in Photoshop and so forth); there are also standalone GUI clients like XSane.

I wrote a document management system in Python/wxWidgets (for Windows) in about a month part-time, and it works very well. Either on Mac or Windows, PDF makes sense because of the ubiquity of the viewers, even if you lose a bit in compression compared to more optimized formats such as DjVu. On Windows you can easily embed the Acrobat ActiveX control; on Mac OS X you have native PDF support, Panther's Preview kicks ass, and there are several open-source PDF browsing components such as the ones out of TeXShop or Glen Low's Graphviz port you can embed in your own app.

Given a choice I would probably pick the Mac to do this project, because of the wonderful Quartz/CoreGraphics Python bindings. You can just draw right to PDF, and place PDF files as if they were images; for example, here's a short script to rotate a bunch of PDF files (sorry, Slashdot destroys Python indentation):

#!/usr/bin/python

from CoreGraphics import *
import math, sys

for inputPDFPath in sys.argv[1:]:
inputProvider = CGDataProviderCreateWithFilename(inputPDFPath)
&n bsp; inputPDF = CGPDFDocumentCreateWithProvider(inputProvider)
&n bsp; if inputPDF is None:
print >> sys.stderr, \
"unable to open '%s': perhaps is not a PDF file?" % inputPDFPath
continue
outputContext = CGPDFContextCreateWithFilename(
inputPDFPath + '-rotated.pdf', None)

for pageNumber in xrange(1, inputPDF.getNumberOfPages() + 1):
mediaBox = inputPDF.getMediaBox(pageNumber)
rotatedBox = CGRectMake(0, 0, mediaBox.getMaxY(), mediaBox.getMaxX())
outputContext.beginPage(rotatedBox)
outputContext.saveGState()
outputContext.translateCTM(0, rotatedBox.size.height)
outputContext.rotateCTM(-math.pi/2)
outputContext.drawPDFDocument(mediaBox, inputPDF, pageNumber)
outputContext.restoreGState()
outputContext.endPage()
outputContext.finish()

tracking down a solution can take hours or days.

Or years, in the case that the maintainers of a scanner API have to negotiate with a manufacturer for access to specifications for a peripheral's trade-secret wire protocol so that they can write drivers.

Okay, taking these programs one at a time:

JCreator: does not run on linux, but other java IDEs such as eclipse run, and there's always the option of trying to just use something like vim.

Scanner: No clue whether or not it is supported, but you can check here. I recently got a Cannon scanner that was perfectally supported according to the list and it was in fact. Then you can use something like Kooka to scan, and for me it's worked like a dream.

Palm: There's always KPilot (the interface I use.) It synchronises almost everything (except mail, I think.) Todo and calendar go to KCalendar, memos go to KNotes, and it lets you install things.

And for MathCAD, no clue. Maybe wine or winex could run it?

Look at all the unsupported scanners SANE Project HP search

Actually, my experience has been that the driver set for Linux is in *some* ways more comprehensive than Windows.

Tell that to any owner of a Microtek Scanmaker 4850 scanner, which is still marked as unsupported in SANE. What should a school do with donated hardware manufactured by a company that refuses to work with the community to develop drivers?

Most people are willing to accept binary drivers as an alternative to no drivers.

I think that's why we need to teach more people about the ethics that started our community and keep the Free Software community going strong even in the face of SCO questioning the validity of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Microsoft's CEOs going on speaking tours talking about how the GPL is a "cancer". I believe that people will choose to take a demonstrably ethical route to doing something when that route is also convenient. Similarly, in another vein, I think that as more people learn about Wal-Mart's employment practices and how they maintain low prices, more people realize that shopping there is sealing one's own fate.

To that end, if we had a hardware database that only listed hardware you could run entirely with Free Software, and if this database were very easy to use (even for novices), we could more easily steer people to companies that work with us. We have the beginnings of such a thing now: lists of video card chipsets that work with XFree86, scanners that work with SANE, printers that work with various Free Software drivers, but some of these are still too hard to use and they're not all found in one place. I'm not sure exactly how this new database would work, but I think one-stop-shopping is one of the highlights. I believe the Free Software Foundation wants to work on something like this, but they don't currently have the funding to do it. Perhaps someone with the hosting and space could work with them to get this going?

Last time I checked, Linux used SANE for scanner hardware support, and the Microtek Scanmaker 4850 I received as a gift was completely unsupported in SANE.

Yeah, it does look like you were unlucky with that one.

However, Linux supports just as much or more hardware than Macs, yet you rarely here anyone declare that Apple must support every single last peice of hardware ever invented in the universe just because Windows does. It doesn't seem to be a problem for Mac users, either; they just make sure the hardware they're buying works on a Mac before they buy it. Not a big deal now, is it?

Good words. While the person you were commenting to was a bit over the top, if you're willing to use your eyes to read, I'll touch just a few scant details about Linux that you might not be aware of.

I'm not promising a comprehensive overview -- you'd get borred looking through Windows at a similar level *if* Windows had this level of detail and it simply doesn't. That might sound arrogant. Maybe it is...see for yourself.

Even if [Windows XP] doesn't have the drivers all I have to do is to pop in the driver disk and all is taken care of.

Linux distributions typically include modules ('drivers') to support all hardware; no need for a driver disk, and no need to compile a kernel like days of old. Like Windows, some advanced features can be added by getting specific upgraded drivers or -- as is common with scanners -- using a non-kernel driver package that is typically installed by default.

Point: Needing to tweak or add modules is the exception not the rule. 5 years ago, yes, it was the rule, and back then I did it...5 years ago.

All those modules plus the kernel weigh in at about ~26MB (pre-made, binary, not customized). The ~26MB breaks down like this: ~22MB for ~750 modules plus a couple more meg for the kernel. Each module that supports hardware tends to support multiple models of similar devices -- for example there are 11 categories of radio hardware supported alone.

A fraction of the modules are for non-hardware specific support. That support covers a wide variety of features from not so booring file systems (including encrypted and network distributed) through to advanced features like the NSA's own security enhacements -- yep *that* National Security Agency.

Each module is tuned to the kernel and the processor it's used on; ia32, ia64, or any of the dozen other non-x86-Intel-style processors.

Hmmm.. you haven't heard of Winamp, (and several other equally good free players) have you?

The point with this is that with Windows, you get so little. A stock Windows setup compared to a stock Linux distribution are amazingly different. XMMS (a fork of Winamp BTW) is included automatically with most distributions, as are CD and DVD burners, integrated into the file browser. Office software, vector graphics editors, TV tuner programs...the list goes on, and nearly all of it is installed by default and ready to use. No searching. No looking. No asking around. There. Installed. Done. The biggest problem is the awesome quantity and quality, though most of that is being handled by careful layout of the 'start' menu just to make it easier to find.

One example of the quality and features common to Linux desktop applications: The CD and DVD burner software included with most current Linux distributions.

Sure, you can close your eyes and believe whatever you want to. You are free to use whatever works for you and so are others.

Agreed. Closing your eyes would be a bad thing.

This scanner was given to me a few years ago at no charge because, as it turned out, there are no drivers available for it for Windows 2000, Windows XP, MacOS 9 or MacOS X.

It is supported by SANE -- but apparently SANE doesn't like the SCSI layer in OS X, so even though my Beige G3 Minitower does have a SCSI-2 port, I can't use it with THAT. (The latest MacOS drivers are for OS 8 and didn't work when I tried them on 9.)

It's a very large and very high-res scanner that produces very crisp images, and although I don't really have much use for a scanner I still get a kick out of the idea that I got it for free. The guy who gave it to me was a hardcore Windows fanatic and was basically ready to throw it away if I didn't take it.

At this point, the scanner's actually hooked up to a computer I have set up by my treadmill to watch videos on. It ended up there because the only working drivers I know of are the SANE drivers running on Linux, and the only SCSI-2 card I have is an ISA card -- so when I upgraded my main Linux machine to an Athlon XP 1800+ recently, with a new motherboard that doesn't have an ISA card, the scanner had to go where the old motherboard (500 MHz P3) went... Which was by the treadmill.