Re: tlug: Scanner access

[Jonathan Byrne - 3Web <jq@example.com>]

On 13 Nov 1998, Totoro wrote:

>I have a scanner (HP IIcx) and wonder if anyone knows a way to
>make it visible via something like smb. I prefer to have it 
>hooked up to my Linux box, allowing Win/Mac machines to use it.

This sounds sticky indeed.  The usual way that Win and Mac boxes access a
scanner is to control it from within an application like Photoshop or
Paintshop Pro, or use the software that comes with the scanner.  The choices,
then are for them to either have a way for their local Photoshop or whatever
they are using to be able to control the scanner across the network, or to use
a solution that lets them connect to an X app on your machine and control that
app across the network.

But this isn't the end of your problems.  Besides that, they are going to have
to get up and walk over to the scanner (I hope you have a real long SCSI cable
so you can put it on a desk other than your own), but the item in it, then go
back to their desk and do the scan, look at it and see it it's what they
expected, then go and get their stuff from the scanner.  And of course,
you also have to deal with multiple people wanting to use it at once.  This
could become a can of worms crawling all over you :-)

We have a SCSI scanner in our office too, but they way we deal with this is to
have it hooked up to the machine that acts as the LAN print server and general
purpose file dump.  Since I have to walk to the scanner anyway, I walk over
there and use software on the machine it's hooked to, then send the file to my
machine.  This seems to be a more workable solution than trying to remotely
control the scanner when I have to walk over to it anyway to put material in.

Of course, if your office doesn't have a computer around that isn't actually
assigned to someone as their work machine, this might not be a practical setup
for you.

BTW, what (if any) open source software is available for controlling scanners
under Linux? I know some proprietary stuff that comes in binary only and works
with a lot of scanners, but I don' know any free stuff.  (Our scanner is
hooked to an NT box.)

Jonathan

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