universal scanner driver for windows xp?

  • Thread starter Thread starter zasit
  • Start date Start date
is there any [Windows] xp universal driver for scanners?
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There are no kernel modules or userspace programs that support all
scanners ever made for *any* OS. This is because there is no standard
for the protocol a scanner uses to communicate with its host computer.
IDE disks, SCSI disks, SCSI tape drives, SATA disks, CD-R* and DVD±RW
units made after 1998, USB Mass Storage devices, USB Human Interface
devices, and Firewire storage devices/video equipment are all supposed
to use standard protocols. So there are many fewer "driver problems"
with these peripherals than there are with scanners and printers.

Scanners have been manufactured for at least 20 years. It really
surprises me that nobody's put together an RFC for a common scanner
protocol. The current situation of "invent a half-assed new protocol
every time we change the model#" seems like it'd waste a great deal of
developer time, and it certainly wastes a great deal of user time.
([I'm] looking for [a] fedelia 19200 xp driver)
Click to expand...

Google://"fedelia 19200 scanner" returns
http://www.fischerclan.de/fedelia19200.html , which might work. I don't
know; I don't speak German or use Windows XP. HTH anyway,
 
Dances With Crows said:
is there any [Windows] xp universal driver for scanners?
Click to expand...

There are no kernel modules or userspace programs that support all
scanners ever made for *any* OS. This is because there is no standard
for the protocol a scanner uses to communicate with its host computer.
Click to expand...

Well, there actually is, sort of.

There is a SCSI-2 set of scanner commands which AFAIK is how ViewScan can
support so many scanners without using TWAIN. Not sure about a USB
equivalent but I suspect there is some sort of standard. Scanner
manufacturers also are allowed to extend their devices with custom
commands. Getting documentation on these extensions is as hard as finding
hen's teeth, which is why no-one has come up with any sort of universal
scanner interface app either.

Finally, even if there was a universal scanner interface driver, the current
nature of the market is that everyone wants such an app for nothing. Given
the low cost of new consumer grade scanners, the amount of work involved in
working out older scanner commands without documentation, and the prospect
of very little to no return, no one has bothered.

There IS the TWAIN comnmand set of course, and is at the application level,
not driver level ... which is the whole point of TWAIN, and for that matter,
the Windows Still Image API / Windows Image Architecture (WIA). All you
need is a way to call the TWAIN / WIA device commands. TWAIN and WIA allow
for images to be acquired with the OEM user interface off (or is supposed
to).

Not many applications support direct TWAIN / WIA commands. My PiXCL software
suite is one of the few that does.


regards,
Stewart DIBBS
========================================
Developer of the PiXCL Image Processing and
Analysis Language for Windows 2000/XP

PiXCL 6.0 is coming early March 2005...

www.vysor.com Gatineau, Quebec, CANADA

========================================
 
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