# Re: quick note from the TWAIN/SANE meeting at OLS

From: David Mosberger-Tang (David.Mosberger@acm.org)
Date: Fri Aug 04 2000 - 10:08:02 PDT

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  >>>>> On Fri, 04 Aug 2000 11:00:39 +0200, Oliver Rauch <oliver.rauch@Wolfsburg.DE> said:

  Oliver> A lot can be covered by qt and gtk wich run on X11 and
  Oliver> WIN32.

  Yup.

  Oliver> Like xsane already shows it is no great problem to port a
  Oliver> frontend written for unix/X11+gtk to run on Windows+gtk.

  Yes, great work, btw!

  >> Mark and Jon offered to start working on a prototype for
  >> TWAIN-on-SANE. I offered them help with constructing a GUI
  >> builder based on our existing GTK frontends (probably xsane).

  Oliver> The main problem is - I think - the definition of the
  Oliver> inter-process-comunication between the application and the
  Oliver> sane-frontend.

  Oliver> Did you discuss that, were there any suggestions?

  Not much. I'm actually reluctant to propose yet another RPC layer
  between TWAIN and SANE. That's why I suggested Bonobo. It's
  basically using (a lightweight) CORBA.

  >> Also, Mark and Jon said that the scanner vendors really like to
  >> be able to customize the look of the scanner GUI.

  Oliver> I think in the moment each scanner vendor does write it's
  Oliver> own GUI. So if they want to have a totally different look
  Oliver> they are free to write their own GUI.

  It is interesting how scanner vendors insist on writing their own
  frontends. Graphics cards vendors seem to be able to live with the
  fact that, on Windows, all they can do is add a couple of tabs to the
  "Display Properties" dialog. I think the Graphics card approach is
  MUCH better because it gives users a (mostly) consistent user
  interface, while still giving vendors a certain level of
  differentiation.

  I think if TWAIN were to become widespread on non-Windows/non-Mac
  platforms, vendors would sooner or later realize that it's just not
  practical to write a custom frontend for each case. What we can offer
  to them is to give up some (not all!) of the control over the look of
  the scanner dialog in return for not having to worry about the scanner
  dialog ever again. Given how scanner prices have dropped over the
  last couple of years, I'm quite sure there must be _some_ vendors that
  would go for this deal.

  >> Slightly fancier would be to have a simple language that would
  >> control how and where each SANE option gets laid out in the
  >> device dialog. Of course, a driver vendor could also feel free
  >> to implement a GUI from scratch if they want full customization,
  >> but that would be a fair amount of work. I think some level of
  >> scriptability would provide a very good tradeoff between custom
  >> look and a uniform user experience.

  Oliver> It should be simple to change the gtk-style-settings in
  Oliver> dependance of the backend. (and to add a logo). We also
  Oliver> could add an info field (sane2.0) to the options that gives
  Oliver> the backend the chance to e.g. requests that a range is
  Oliver> displayed as slider or text-entry-field, ... but already
  Oliver> this can make it hard for the frontend to create a good
  Oliver> looking outfit.

  Different "skins" (themes) are also a way to make a dialog look more
  unique without even changing how the interface works. Anyhow, making
  the user-interface scriptable certainly would require some thought.
  It's of course a chicken-and-egg problem. It would help greatly if we
  had one or two scanner vendors that would be willing to work with us,
  so we can make sure that the work wouldn't be wasted.

  --david

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  - Next message: Oleg Baranov: "SnapScan 1236s troubles"
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  - In reply to: Oliver Rauch: "Re: quick note from the TWAIN/SANE meeting at OLS"
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