GNOME Scan

Hi,

After one month of heavy development, i release GNOME Scan 0.7.1. This release is an alpha “preview” of the 0.8 series. It has several regression, however it already show improvments in behaviour, features and support.

You can download it at http://download.gnome.org/source/gnome-scan/0.7/

See detailed annoucement at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2009-January/msg00044.html including known regressions.

This version is not parralel installable with 0.6. However, you should be able to run it from source : run ./configure && make && src/flegita .

last weeks, i didn’t work as heavily as in december. Some bugs gets fixed in 0.6. 0.8 won’t land along 2.26 because i won’t be able to follow feature freeze and such. This is another good reason to maintain 0.6 branch. Philipp Sadleder is THE maintainer of the 0.6 branch. I fix bug he ask me to fix. He does a pretty good work and help me a lot triaging bug, fixing bug, etc. 0.6 is a quite good version with enhanced support and performance. Even if 0.8 does better in all of these fields, 0.6 is a major release that should have its glory

0.8 will be for 2.28. There is good chance to get it with 2.28. There is preview area, processing, flegita-gimp, flegita-print, prerequisite, saving to GConf and other things to implement before 0.8 gets ready. That’s fairly big piece of the project but a huge part has been done. 0.7 has only 1000 C lines less than 0.6.1.

All in all, releasing 0.8 six month later allows other project like vala to evolve and mature. This should make 0.8 a very good base. 0.7.2 will include preview area and prerequisite. I plan to follow 2.27 schedule for beta, string freeze, etc.

Regards,

Étienne.

Hi,

Due to demand, I decided to branch 0.6 and maintain it a bit. Gnome Scan 0.4 is still tryied by some users due to ubuntu but it has blocker bug. So was 0.6 along older version of Gegl. So i updated 0.6 to Gegl 0.0.21 SVN, fixed a tiny bug about cursor and add support for Gimp 2.6 menu layout to Gimp plugin.

Download it at http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-scan/0.6/ .

Today, i got Gnome Scan to actually scan the file. Building the Gegl pipeline is done.next step is to port GSane to new API. There is still a lot of work until feature partity : preview, processing, Gimp plugin, etc. Then documentation etc. Nevertheless, i committed the work to SVN in order to allow tester an contributors to participate. I’ll publish a 0.7.1 version before Christmass at all cost, including no preview or no gimp plugin.

Regards,

Étienne.

Hi,

Finally, i got GNOME Scan 0.6 ready and sync with GNOME 2.22. This release is a big milestone. Let me expose you all the changes since 0.4.

• Completely redesigned and rewritten
• Modularize all the acquisition pipeline from the scanner to the sink.
• Dynamic pipeline plugins parameter list exposed to the UI
• Based on GEGL for huge sized image handling and much much more
• multi thread anywhere : probing, acquisition and more
• acquisition from images
• automatic per application scan settings saving in GConf
• optionnal automatic color enhancement
• available in 15 languages
• Streamlined GUI for mass acquisition
• extended SANE driver support and workarounds
• Regression: no PDF nor JPEG saving

Please make a big welcome to this milestone, ask your distro to publish it along GNOME 2.22 and report ideas, bugs and more for the future.

• http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-scan/0.6
  
• Available in my PPA for gutsy and hardy.

As 0.6 says, the road is long before 1.0 which will be hopefully synced with GNOME version number. Amongs other things here are the plans for the future:

• Consolidate code and API. This is important before producing bindings, tutorial, etc. for wider adoption from developers.
  • Split dialog code for better reusability
  • Review preview UI management
  • improve option handling, especially for high level option like PaperSize, etc.
  • Improve device handling: status/error reporting, opening in seperate thread, etc.
• Merge scan dialog and acquisition dialog, allow to configure next scan without relaunching dialog
• Use hal scanner API and hotplug smoothness as well as signal monitoring
• Fully migrate to GeglOperation, this avoid us to split the progress bar in 3 stage.
• Support sheet-fed scanners, webcam, etc.
• PDF, jpeg, printing and more for flegita.

I started some weeks ago the work on hal-scanner. It’s going well, i’ll submit it to HAL and take it in account as soon as possible in gnome-scan. Packages will always be in my PPA.

Don’t hesitate to report well commented bug for GNOME Scan . You know i really want to finally fix this big whole in GNOME and desktops in general about scanning. Your use case, your ideas, your hardware specific behaviour/feature interest me a lot. Reporting all that in bugzilla allow me to have a high view of all the neds and design properly for most uses. Thanks

Regards,

Étienne.

Hi,

I’m very happy with feedback from 0.5.93 release. I merged 3 patches from Ross Burton and got translation updates. I decide to provide a new RC release due to the big amout of bug fixes this release has :

• Migrate to new GTK+ tooltip API. Depends on GTK+ 2.12
• Added blurb for PNG compression level option in flegita.
• Translate application name in about flegita dialog.
• Focus Forward button in GnomeScanAcquisitionDialog.
• Fixed hidden option exposed in UI (bug #519331).
• Don’t depends on libgnome and libgnomeui, thanks to Ross Burton (bug #519344). Fixed untranslated application name.
• Don’t version modules, thanks to Ross Burton (bug #519350).
• Cleaned up build system, thanks to Ross Burton.
• Fixed GSFile backend not updated for a while. Migrated to GEGL 0.0.16, etc.
• Use explicit gettext domain in library rather than using application defined one.

Updated translation from Jorge González (es), Étienne Bersac (fr) and Daniel Nylander (sv)

Sources are in GNOME FTP, Packages are available in my PPA. I may provide 0.5.95 monday march the 3rd and will release 0.6 monday march the 10th as promised. Please report bugs and translate

Étienne.

Hi,

I’m very pleased to announce the availability of Gnome Scan 0.5.93. It’s a very good release, it’s not 0.6 only because i want to wait until hard code freeze in order to get more translation, and feedback. This annoucement include 0.5.92 version which was released monday.

• Clean preview handling allowing to use hardware capability
• Manual page orientation handling
• Use 75.dpi as hardcoded resolution, this is more common accross backend.
• Accurate preview area ROI selection using real rather than integer.
• Fixed preview acquisition progress bar not shown (regression).
• Fix lots of ref/unref leaks both GeglBuffer and widgets
• Automatic per app option saving in GConf
• Automatic color enhancement.
• Use a waiting cursor if probing in background.
• Dropped buggy printing in flegita.
• About dialog is back.
• Depends on GEGL 0.0.16 (this won’t change until 0.7.1).
• Reworked and completed documentation, needs some tutorial, but API is not stable enough for that.

Without color enhancement

With color enhancement enabled

As you can see, there is tons of bug fixes, 0.5.9X are really beta version, even if the API and internal code are meant to change in the future, i wanted to get a stable version enough for production. Please test it and translate it !

• Gnome Scan sources tarball
• Gnome Scan Ubuntu gutsy debs
• Report bug
• Translation statistics
  

SVN has new tooltip API and minor changes. I plan only to document that all, fill bugs for next version and plan the future. 0.6 will be in time for Gnome 2.22

Regards,
Étienne.

Hi,

After holidays and slow work, if finaly release 0.5.4 including processing infrastruture and rotation. There is other enhancement and bug fixes detailed in the NEWS file. This release is in sync with GEGL r1840. GEGL might provide a 0.0.16 release for march, i wish Gnome Scan 0.6 will arrive sync in march.

Thanks to Gnome wonderful admins, i now have access to Gnome FTP. install-module is a pretty handy tool ! So now, the download site is http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-scan/. You’ll find tarballs in http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-scan/0.5/. Packages are already uploaded to my PPA.

Please report test it and report bugs. I know this release has some bugs and i wish to get it stable for march. I want to add PDF output and that should be ok for 0.6. The rest will be bug fixes. I prefer to reject features for 0.8 (more processing, etc.). I might update AbiScan for use with 0.6 and latest ocropus, but nothing sure.

Étienne

Hi,

It’s time for a new release. So please welcome Gnome Scan 0.5.2 loosly codenamed « Ça ROCs » due to AbiScan dependency on this release . Amongst other changes, here are some highlights :

• Preview area drawning and selection
• Action framework in flegita (added [buggy] printing feature)
• Revamped icon handling. Use “scanner” icon from icon naming spec.
• Resurrected Gimp plugin.
• Several API enhancements.
• Some bugfixes.

I encourage you to test and report as much bug as possible. There is a lot of room for improvement and some area are still untouched (e.g. processing). In the near future, i plan to improve area handling and preview area (resize, move, etc). After that, i should take a stand and design proper processing model and implement it. I need to fix printing, but GtkPrint seems not that suitable if you dissociate dialog and printing. Needs further investigation. I hope to provide 0.5.3 for october.

Please hunt the bug !

Kind regards,
Étienne.

Hi all of you !

It’s time for a release after the reset of the project. Gnome Scan 0.5.1 has almost all features of 0.4 and tons of both user visible and internals improvements. Highlight of this release are plugin system, dynamic UI building, Gegl-base processing, multi-threaded programming, file acquisition and more. Regressions from 0.4 are : no rotation, no gimp plugin (please notify me if you find other). Read the NEWS and ChangeLog for more informations.

• You can download sources at http://download.gna.org/gnomescan/gnome-scan-0.5.1.tar.gz
• I provide Ubuntu Feisty Fawn .deb source and i386 .deb at deb http://bersace03.free.fr/ubuntu feisty universe .
• Update: History screenshots ( You can play finding differences between two following screenshots)

I produce this release in order to get feedbacks. Especially, i would like feedbacks on SANE support, UI design, responsiveness as well as API. If anyone feel like writing the Gimp plugin, that would be a great test for the new design.

Update: I fixed packaging, thanks to Karel Demeyer and Anonymous #1.

Cheers !
Étienne.

Hi,

Today i release 0.4.1 version of gnome-scan. This is a bugfix release. It handle resolution enum and drop dual resolution handling. Thanks Jean-François Fortin for reporting the bug and Philipp Sadleder for the patch.

• http://download.gna.org/gnomescan/gnomescan-0.4.1.tar.gz

Gnome Scan 0.4 is far too hardcoded. It’s incredible to see how gnome-scan 0.5 change this. I really don’t want to maintain 0.4 branch, it’s a waste of time. I won’t maintain any paste branch with 0.X version number.

You can test gnome-scan 0.5 SVN by using ubuntu packages i provide at

deb http://bersace03.free.fr/ubuntu feisty universe

The repository contains gnome-scan SVN and all the dependencies. (babl and gegl SVN). Deb sources are available.

Currently, gnome-scan 0.5 implements device and sink configuration. Acquisition works one or multiple (sane backend does not support yet multiple acquisition). No preview area yet, not rotation nor any processing yet. Also, beware that flegita overwrite existing files. Anyway, with gnome-scan 0.5, you can taste all the new features and improvements. I let you discover them .

Regards,
Étienne

Hi all !!

Update: emergency 0.4.0.1 release : fix build failure & include latest swedish translation

For Chrismas, i expected a 0.3.2 release, but enhancments and API breakage are so important, i decided to make a major release. i codenamed this release « Is your app people-ready ? » in order to wink at Microsoft advertisments in the past month : « Are you people ready ? ». I really hate this ads which don’t expose product quality, but “feelings” and “concepts”. That’s manipulation. This release of Gnome Scan add nice smart behaviour that make it very suitable for daily use, both for basic and advanced users.

Highlights

• The scan dialog has been entirely review and is now very consistent with Gtk print dialog. The new dialog implements a mecanism to include extras widget inside the dialog instead of building an entire dialog using provided widgets. This add consistency between app using Gnome Scan, and reduce the amount of code in app/plugin.
• Gnome Scan now implement a smart way of selecting area and rotation for you. Select the device, select the source, select the format and the page orientation. Gnome Scan will compute if the document will be rotated in order to fit the scanner, and centered if you use ADF.
• Gnome Scan preview now allow you to resize only “custom size”. So if you choose A4 paper, you will just be able to move the area. Select back Custom size to adjust area again.
• The preview area now shows a “document” icon in top left corner instead of a centered application icon, this is far more useful when you set the rotation, in order to know where is you document, even if you didn’t trigger preview acquisition.
• Gnome Scan now handle X/Y resolution. Gnome Scan try determine wether the device allow dual resolution and allow you to unsync res.
• Gimp plugin now allow you to choose layer name before scan. The acquisition dialog is now 4 times smaller !!
• Updated translations. Many thanks to Philip Sadleder for deutsch translation, Gil Forcada for catalan translation and Daniel Nylander for swedish translation !

Links

• Screenshots
• Downloads
• Report bugs
• Homepage
  

Under the hood

• GnomeScanDialog has been highly reviewed. It now herit (again) from GtkDialog, like GtkPrintUnixDialog. GnomeScanDialog now use GtkNotebook in order to separate fields. This allow to have a tab completely dedicated to preview. In contrary to printing, scan preview is interactive : user can choose area and rotation, this is why i choose to use a tab instead of a separate window. The preview tab is shown only if user select “Flatbed” source.
• The GnomeScanDialog implement a “front widget” mecanism that allow developer to add a custom widget in the General tab, below source and format selectors. There is not yet an API for adding/hiding custom tabs.
• Introducing GnomeScanAreaSelector, a smart widget that allow user to choose document format and orientation. When a device is selected, the widget compute a list of available formats that fit the device geometry. The widget compute if the document needs to be rotated to fit the device geometry and setup the context in order to rotate back the document in the right orientation. This behaviour apply both with flatbed or adf source selected. GnomeScanAreaSelector use new Gtk+-2.10 GtkPaperSize API which use PWG standard for sizes and names.
• Gnome Scan now store wether an area is user defined (custom) or not, this allow GnomeScanPreviewArea to hide resize handle if area is not user defined.
• GnomeScanContext now handle dual resolution. However, i based the device dual resolution capability on SANE 2 standard. SANE backends may implement differently that for SANE 1. That’s one of the problem with SANE.
• GnomeScanPreview and GnomeScanAdvancedPreview has been dropped. They were quite duplicated. now GnomeScanDialog provide a unique preview GUI.
• GnomeScannerSelector has been dropped in favor of GnomeScanListStore which allow to feed both GtkTreeView (implemented) or GtkComboBox. GnomeScanDialog now use a GtkTreeView feeded with a GnomeScanListStore.
• GnomeScanOptionWidget has also been dropped. This widget only added automaticcaly a field before a widget. This widget didn’t allow to keep fields aligned. Now let user use either a GtkTable or frame (like GnomeScanDialog).
• Add a –disabled-gnome option in order to build flegita for xfce desktop target. (Patch from Olaf Leidinger).

How to help ?

• Please test the smart behaviour. If your does not center document in ADF, if should review the process.
• If you didn’t find useful stock paper size, please ask for adding it.
• Please translate this major alpha release.
• If your device handle dual resolution, please test wether Gnome Scan detect this capability.
• Spread the word, ask for package in your distribution or package it !

About Gnome Scan and Gnome

I failed to follow Gnome 2.18 schedule. Mostly because i’m new to free software development, i do not yet manage my work as i want. I often let Gnome Scan hibernate during few weeks, and then develop it during on weeks and produce a release. I wish i’ll be able to spend this week just before tarball dues.
Also, Gnome Scan still have deep API changes. I wonder if i will modify the API to be more consistant with GtkPrint API, as far as possible.

Gnome SVN migration is soon to be completed. I wish to switch to a a gnome as possible hosting solution for SVN, FTP, translation, …

Future

For next releases, i intend to implement a few features.

• Select maximal possible area.
• Auto select area.
• Gamma correction.
• Highlight/Shadow point
• The return of GnomeScanOptionSet.
• Device specific options tab in GnomeScanDialog.
• Depth selection.
• Colorspace selection.
• Whatever you asked for …

SANE and HAL

Currently, SANE manage two task : probe and access. That’s a bad thing. SANE must let OS do the probe and ask it for access. SANE should provide a simple glue between various OSes and driver so that OSes can load driver on plug, monitor buttons, and trigger acquisition. I wish that SANE 2 will move toward this design or scanner in HAL will be a dream (or cost a fork which i really do not want). After 1.0 release, i plan to implement one or two driver for SANE (my father owns about 9 scanners at home from all-in-one printers to various pens), especially a nice business card reader. This will allow me to dive deeply into SANE, hoping to make constructive critic for SANE 2 design. Martin Owens is working hard on Scanner in HAL, wish that for this summer, Gnome Scan will use HAL.

Allan, a most active SANE devloper said that linux distro user often do not use HAL. I really think that’s a mistake. All major distro ship HAL, and tons of other ditros do that too. SANE can handle probe, but must allow OS integration. Mac OS X has nothing for scanners. Vista has a very nice scanner handling (espcially probe and detection), but drivers lakes or are unsusable, also Vista scan UI is a joke (not people ready !). Freedesktops has a huge opportunity to make the difference with proprietary OSes ; Droping “probe each launch” and adding hotplug+button support is a must-have feature to fulfill this goal, along with OCR.

Merry Chrismas and see you in 2007 !

Étienne.