Fellow hackers -
I just got an Epson Perfection 1650U scanner, because it looked
like a good match to SANE. I don't touch Microsoft products with
a ten foot pole, so I didn't even open the shrink-wrap on the
manuals and CDs that came with the scanner. After some fiddling
(because I'm unfamiliar with USB, and am running on an old Red
Hat 6.2 install) it came up under SANE perfectly. I'm very happy
with the images it spits out, and the xscanimage user interface
is very functional and easy to learn. My wife and 12 year old
son are already having fun with it.
Of course, I have a wish list. I'm a skilled c programmer (but
unfamiliar with gtk), so if you encourage me I might add these
features myself.
1. automatic compression, basically by specifying a pipe instead
of an output file name. cjpeg will do the trick.
2. better use of the four buttons on the scanner. Maybe this is
more a backend issue? If a daemon were sitting there, it might
have a chance of using the "copy" button for what it's designed
for. The "to web" and "to e-mail" buttons are a little far-fetched.
Anyway, thanks for the neat software! I know first hand that it
can be a lot of work, and attaboy's like this can lift the spirits.
- Larry
