Revision of Setup a Scanner from Fri, 02/06/2015 - 18:42

Checking for Compatibility

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) previously maintained a hardware directory. The FSF has has begun migrating this data to the community supported site h-node.

• The scanner site is a resource that will help users find information about if scanners work with all Free Software. Users are encouraged to submit hardware information to h-node because this will help the community know which hardware is supported and which to avoid.

Lastly, consult the links related to SANE in the Printer Freedom page as most devices use this API on GNU/Linux.

Page dimensions

Simple Scan has page setting options in Document -> Preferences.

If your scanner doesn't seem to listen to your Preferences settings, you can modify the page dimensions after scanning.

" Suppose we want to trim the pages of our input file prior to n-upping. This can be done by using a pipe:

 pdfjam myfile.pdf --trim '1cm 2cm 1cm 2cm' --clip true --outfile /dev/stdout |   pdfnup --frame true --outfile myoutput.pdf

The --trim option specifies an amount to trim from the left, bottom, right and top sides respectively; to work as intended here it needs also --clip true. These (i.e., trim and clip) are in fact options to LaTeX's \includegraphics command (in the standard graphics package)." - Example 6 - University of Warwick

Frontends for SANE (GUI)

SANE frontends is software that is designed to interact with the SANE API. This is only required, if you prefer scanning with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). On Trisquel you can find simple-scan, which has virtually no setup and will provide enough functionality for most users. Consult the link for additional software.

Sources

• Community member Magic Bananna