Bug#964446: RFP: sane-airscan - SANE backend for AirScan (eSCL) and WSD document scanners
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
* Package name : sane-airscan
Version : 0.99.8
Upstream Author : Alexander Pevzner <pzz@apevzner.com>
* URL : https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan
* License : GPL-2+ with sane exception (same as sane-backends)
Programming Lang: C
Description : SANE backend for AirScan (eSCL) and WSD document
scanners
sane-airscan is a SANE backend (scanner driver) for two
manufacturer-neutral, standardized communication protocols (AirScan/eSCL
and WSD) which are used by the scanners in most modern printer/scanner
multi-function devices and so used by thousands of scanners.
.
Similar to modern printers (especially the printing parts of the
mentioned multi-function devices) using standard protocols and so
printing driverless (driver = hardware-model-specific software or data)
we are also scanning driverless with this backend using the standard
scanning protocols of the multi-function devices.
.
In the near future even a third standard protocol, IPP Scan of the
Printer Working Group (www.pwg.org) will be added.
.
This all work not only with network-connected devices which advertise
themselves via DNS-SD but also with USB devices using IPP-over-USB (with
the ipp-usb software, RFP:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=961218, only needed
for USB access, not required for network access)
From the original README.md:
----------
Similar to how most modern network printers support "driverless"
printing, using the universal vendor-neutral printing protocol, many
modern network scanners and MFPs support "driverless" scanning.
Driverless scanning comes in two flavors:
Apple AirScan or AirPrint scanning (official protocol name is eSCL)
Microsoft WSD, or WS-Scan (term WSD means "Web Services for Devices)
This backend implements both protocols, choosing automatically between
them. It was successfully tested with many devices from Brother, Canon,
Kyocera, Lexmark, Epson, HP, Ricoh, Samsung and Xerox both in WSD and
eSCL modes.
For eSCL devices, Apple maintains a comprehensive list of compatible
devices, but please note, this list contains not only scanners and MFP,
but pure printers as well.
This backend doesn't require to install and doesn't conflict with
vendor-provided proprietary software like ScanGear from Canon, HPLIP
from HP and so on.
----------
sane-airscan is a standard SANE backend and makes all eSCL- and
WSD-based scanners immediately available to all SANE-based frontends,
like simple-scan, X-SANE, ... It also supports the full functionality of
the scanners, especially the ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) which is
not supported by the "escl" backend in SANE 1.0.29 and newer. There are
also some devices which support only WSD and not eSCL which are
therefiore supported only by this backend and not by "escl".
As eSCL and WSD is supported by the same backend devices with both eSCL
and WSD support get only listed once in SANE frontends (most modern MF
devices support both protocols).
It is tested already by many users on many devices (see the list in the
README.md file).
Alexander Pevzner, author of the backend (and of ipp-usb) answers to bug
reports (GutHub issues) quickly and works closely together with the user
to fix the bug. In addition, the backend is under active development,
IPP Scan is planned to be added by end of September.
Alexander is also generating and publishing binary packages for all
major Linux distributions via the OpenSUSE Build Service. The files for
the Debian package, to be found here
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:pzz/sane-airscan
could be a start for creating a .deb package of sane-airscan.
It would be great to have sane-airscan as standard part of Debian, to
make thousands of scanners just work.
As it will get also synced into Ubuntu I will stay in collaboration with
the potential packager/Debian maintainer of it as will be the Debian
Printing group.
Till
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