primax: Thread: Xsane -- Scan-mode is missing!

Hi all

I've had enough time today to go over Xsane. As you all know I asked the other 
day how to do a gray scale scan. No one answered. Well, looking in the help 
files of Xsane it shows a "scanmode" button. But when I run xsane the button 
is missing. Does anyone know what I should do?

Note to Oliver Rauch: I'm running Xsane useing a primax PP scanner the 
"MM-100" model sold by Media Markt in Germany. My system is SuSE 8.1 pro. 

Thanks

JIM

-- 
Jim Hatridge
Linux User #88484
------------------------------------------------------
                 BayerWulf
           Linux System # 129656
         The Recycled Beowulf Project
  Looking for throw-away or obsolete computers and parts
   to recycle into a Linux super computer

The scanmode-option is a backend option.
When the backend does not define this option then
xsane does not display it.

Bye
Oliver

On Tuesday 26 November 2002 11:38, James Hatridge wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I've had enough time today to go over Xsane. As you all know I asked the
> other day how to do a gray scale scan. No one answered. Well, looking in
> the help files of Xsane it shows a "scanmode" button. But when I run xsane
> the button is missing. Does anyone know what I should do?
>
> Note to Oliver Rauch: I'm running Xsane useing a primax PP scanner the
> "MM-100" model sold by Media Markt in Germany. My system is SuSE 8.1 pro.
>
> Thanks
>
> JIM

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On Tuesday 26 November 2002 11:38, James Hatridge wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I've had enough time today to go over Xsane. As you all know I asked the
> other day how to do a gray scale scan. No one answered. Well, looking in
> the help files of Xsane it shows a "scanmode" button. But when I run xsane
> the button is missing. Does anyone know what I should do?
>
> Note to Oliver Rauch: I'm running Xsane useing a primax PP scanner the
> "MM-100" model sold by Media Markt in Germany. My system is SuSE 8.1 pro.
>
> Thanks
>
> JIM

The scanmode option is removed from the backend. Indeed the backend cannot 
receive grayscale or 1-bit images. The modes were emulated by reducing the 
colors. To make the backend slim it was removed.
XSane cannot emulate this, yet. 
So the best way is to use gimp with XSane or the xscanimage plugin. This is as 
easy as using the pure XSane and you get all the facilities of Gimp for 
manipulating the image. This includes some nice options for reducing the 
color space.

The emulation code is still there and could easily be activeted. But I think 
it is better to have an easy to use driver leave things like color management 
to the frontend or graphic program.

Gruss,

Andre

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On Tuesday 26 November 2002 19:56, Andre Herms wrote:
> The scanmode option is removed from the backend. Indeed the backend cannot
> receive grayscale or 1-bit images. The modes were emulated by reducing the
> colors. To make the backend slim it was removed.
> XSane cannot emulate this, yet.
> So the best way is to use gimp with XSane or the xscanimage plugin. This is
> as easy as using the pure XSane and you get all the facilities of Gimp for
> manipulating the image. This includes some nice options for reducing the
> color space.
>
> The emulation code is still there and could easily be activeted. But I
> think it is better to have an easy to use driver leave things like color
> management to the frontend or graphic program.
>
> Gruss,
>
> Andre

HI Andre et al,,,

Ok I fired up gimp and figured out how to make grayscale and clipart. BUT 
honestly doing this way is a real PIA. Being that my bulletin is printed only 
in b/w I have to change each picture one at a time. Under W$ I set a buttion 
and it's done as I scan in the picture. That's alot easyer. Linux will always 
have problems with people until this sort of thing is changed. 

Think on this. As long as I'm doing the scanning myself I'll do it the PIA way 
just because I don't like W$. But the moment I have to pay someone to scan in 
all the pictures (btw it takes me about a day to do all for one issue) Linux 
will be out the door. W$ is just quicker and as an employer I have to count 
pennies. This must change. You as the programmer must make it as easy as 
possible for the user. 

BTW thanks for what you've already done. Overall it's a great program. But 
don't stop now <G>.


JIM

BTW:  I publish the only English speaking stamp bulletin in Germany. Once a 
quarter I print a bulletin about that quarter's German new issue. My bulletin 
is 20 pages long and is translated into Japanese and sometimes Chinese. I've 
got readers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, and PR China. 

-- 
Jim Hatridge
Linux User #88484
------------------------------------------------------
                 BayerWulf
           Linux System # 129656
         The Recycled Beowulf Project
  Looking for throw-away or obsolete computers and parts
   to recycle into a Linux super computer

> 
> HI Andre et al,,,
> 
> Ok I fired up gimp and figured out how to make grayscale and clipart. BUT 
> honestly doing this way is a real PIA. Being that my bulletin is printed only
> 
> in b/w I have to change each picture one at a time. Under W$ I set a buttion 
> and it's done as I scan in the picture. That's alot easyer. Linux will always
> 
> have problems with people until this sort of thing is changed. 
> 
> Think on this. As long as I'm doing the scanning myself I'll do it the PIA
> way 
> just because I don't like W$. But the moment I have to pay someone to scan in
> 
> all the pictures (btw it takes me about a day to do all for one issue) Linux 
> will be out the door. W$ is just quicker and as an employer I have to count 
> pennies. This must change. You as the programmer must make it as easy as 
> possible for the user. 
> 
> BTW thanks for what you've already done. Overall it's a great program. But 
> don't stop now <G>.
> 
> 
> JIM

Exactly. You have to pay someone usually - and the folks giving you your
software like Andre are by and large doing it for the love of it, not for cash.

This is difficult stuff, it takes time, hard to find documentation, and 
dedication. Maybe I misunderstood your tone but:

"This must change. You as the programmer must make it as easy as possible
for the user".

True, but you're not talking to paid tech support here. Worth keeping
in mind...

regards,
Graham


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On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 05:04:24PM +0100, James Hatridge wrote:
> in b/w I have to change each picture one at a time.
man convert (after installing imagemagick *g)

> Think on this. As long as I'm doing the scanning myself I'll do it the PIA way 
> just because I don't like W$. But the moment I have to pay someone to scan in 
> all the pictures (btw it takes me about a day to do all for one issue) Linux 
> will be out the door. W$ is just quicker and as an employer I have to count 
> pennies. This must change. You as the programmer must make it as easy as 
> possible for the user. 
we don't MUST anything... you might suggest something or implement it
yourself.
And to quote a little part from the stuff at the beginning of each sourcefile:
"this foo is provided AS IS ... foo ... no warranty ..."

And to say something about UNIX philosophy: "one job one tool" ... and why
should we do the color reduction stuff when there're dozens of tools which can 
do it, maybe even better. The data read from the scanner always is RGB, so 
scanning "greyscale" wouldn't speedup the scanning process.

You could even use primax_scan for batch scanning and convert to reduce colors ...
everything together in a nice little script written in a programming language
of your choice .-)

Greatings.

-- 
Christian Ordig
Germany

On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 09:42:10AM -0800, Graham Hay wrote:
> "This must change. You as the programmer must make it as easy as possible
> for the user".
> 
> True, but you're not talking to paid tech support here. Worth keeping
> in mind...
Thanks for the short summary. That's exactly what I tried to say with my 
mail :-)
In other words if you _really_ want software that's exactly doing what you
want, you're free to hire someone doing this for you. (even with Software
licenced under GNU GPL)

-- 
Christian Ordig
Germany

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On Wednesday 27 November 2002 18:45, Christian Ordig wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 05:04:24PM +0100, James Hatridge wrote:
> > in b/w I have to change each picture one at a time.
>
> man convert (after installing imagemagick *g)
>
> > Think on this. As long as I'm doing the scanning myself I'll do it the
> > PIA way just because I don't like W$. But the moment I have to pay
> > someone to scan in all the pictures (btw it takes me about a day to do
> > all for one issue) Linux will be out the door. W$ is just quicker and as
> > an employer I have to count pennies. This must change. You as the
> > programmer must make it as easy as possible for the user.
>
> we don't MUST anything... you might suggest something or implement it
> yourself.
> And to quote a little part from the stuff at the beginning of each
> sourcefile: "this foo is provided AS IS ... foo ... no warranty ..."
>

Hi,

I hope this discussion is not going to flame up too much. I personally take 
this as as "It must change or it will never compete with the Windows driver".

This is also my opinion. There should be a way to do grayscale images without 
installing imagemagik. This can be a workaround but shouldn't be the final 
solution.

The problem why this is not done yet is not, that I don't want this feature. 
The problem is that I don't want the way it is done before. 
I think, not the backend (primax_scan) but the frontend should support this. 
You can compare it with the options for the gamma tables. Before a had options 
for brightness, contrast and gamma. The backend emulated them by modifying 
the gamma tables itself. No this is done by the frontend and has some 
advantages. As you can try yourself, you can change the contrast, brightness 
and gamma settings and see immediatly in the preview window. This was not 
possible before. 
Scanning 1-bit images you want to have a threshold value for selecting, what 
should appear white or black. This could also be seen in the preview, but 
only if the calculation is done by the frontend. So this would be the *right* 
way to do it.

The only problem is that it is not done yet. 
So there are two possible solutions:
(1) Add the option to the backend. This is not the best way but would provide 
additional comfort to the user.
(2) Add the option to the frontend. This would mean hacking the frontend code. 
As I don't know anything about it - this could be really difficult. 

I think if you want this feature, you should contact the author of the 
frontend. He can add this.


Conclusion: You are right if you want this feature. But it will not be 
provided by us as we are not responsible.

Greatings,

Andre
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On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 12:48:10AM +0100, Andre Herms wrote:
> The problem why this is not done yet is not, that I don't want this feature. 
> The problem is that I don't want the way it is done before. 
> I think, not the backend (primax_scan) but the frontend should support this. 
different color modes belong into the backend, but they should really use the
scanner greyscale etc. hardware mode, so scanning becomes faster and not simply
scan full color and reduce in the backend.

> You can compare it with the options for the gamma tables. Before a had options 
> for brightness, contrast and gamma. The backend emulated them by modifying 
> the gamma tables itself. No this is done by the frontend and has some 
> advantages. 
with a 24bit scanner this is ok, but with a 30Bit scanner, I would let do
the scanner/backend the stuff of color correction they have access to the real
raw data.

-- 
Christian Ordig
Germany

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On Thursday 28 November 2002 14:42, Christian Ordig wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 12:48:10AM +0100, Andre Herms wrote:
> > The problem why this is not done yet is not, that I don't want this
> > feature. The problem is that I don't want the way it is done before.
> > I think, not the backend (primax_scan) but the frontend should support
> > this.
>
> different color modes belong into the backend, but they should really use
> the scanner greyscale etc. hardware mode, so scanning becomes faster and
> not simply scan full color and reduce in the backend.

Does the scanner support hardware grayscale mode? Of course should the scanner 
do it if it can. But IF NOT, the job has to be done in software and this is 
best done in the frontend. Otherwise all the backends would contain code for 
color reduction instead of one code int the frontend.

> > You can compare it with the options for the gamma tables. Before a had
> > options for brightness, contrast and gamma. The backend emulated them by
> > modifying the gamma tables itself. No this is done by the frontend and
> > has some advantages.
>
> with a 24bit scanner this is ok, but with a 30Bit scanner, I would let do
> the scanner/backend the stuff of color correction they have access to the
> real raw data.

The frontend has access to all the scanner funtions, the frontend has. A 1-bit 
mode can be done by setting a step as gamma function. This would provide a 
30Bit threshold which is as good as the scanner can do. 

Gruss,

Andre
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