Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

dcung · Posted: Mon 23 Jul 2018, 23:50 Post subject:

I fresh installed Precise571, XenPup32_75, XenPup64_75
No luck with Precise571, too many out of date modules to fix. Gave up on Precise571.

For a minute, I thought I had good news to report... Crying or Very sad

Fresh install XenPup64, and only install ubuntu-16 scanner driver.
Both imagescan and xsane picked up the scanner.

Scanner scans when I click "Refresh" or "Preview" or "Scan" from both apps (ie. make noise, scan light moves from one end to the other).
But none of them can display or save the result.

I'm guessing, the problem now 'move' to graphics from the errors messages. From PPM, I added stuff that has 'gdk', errors - not resolved.

rcrsn51 · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 01:36 Post subject:

I don't understand why this is suddenly working with USB when previous attempts did not.

But your xsane screen shot shows "gm: command not found" This is because the package graphicsmagick is missing. Get it from the PPM.

dcung · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 01:57 Post subject:

rcrsn51 · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 02:43 Post subject:

What was happening in the program at the point where it aborted?

There is still something missing in XenialPup, but no hints about what it is.

dcung · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 03:12 Post subject:

My bad..., Bill.
After playing with both programs a bit more, this is what happened.

Both programs can scan successfully. No errors upon exiting programs.
Both programs can NOT preview (preview windows empty). Errors upon exiting programs if preview was done. The errors (terminal screenshot) I posted last was due to doing preview.

So, I can scan in both programs, but can not preview and select scan area using mouse (like cropping). Both programs, I can specify scan area by typing page borders.

In xsane preview, before installing graphicsmagick, it pretended doing preview, no error popup (attached below). Afterward, 'failed' error popup.

Don't know how to explain it clearly...weird.

rcrsn51 · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 07:11 Post subject:

Do these same problems occur in Kali?

[Edit] Now that you have sorted out the USB problem, it would be interesting to try the epkowa driver again in Xenial.

dcung · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 17:00 Post subject:

dcung · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 17:16 Post subject:

xsane also picked scanner that is in imagescan.conf

rcrsn51 · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 17:48 Post subject:

Install the 64bit epkowa PET I posted for you on Page 4. Ignore the version number - it refers to the SANE version.

Do NOT install anything else from that group of three PETS.

The objective here is to determine if your scanner is backwards compatible with epkowa, and whether the preview function would work with it.

dcung · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 19:00 Post subject:

rcrsn51 · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 19:58 Post subject:

Too bad. It looks like the imagescan driver is the only game in town for future Epson models.

Hopefully, the preview bug can eventually be sorted out.

dcung · Posted: Tue 24 Jul 2018, 23:33 Post subject:

Since I did already fresh install Precise, XenPup75_32, and XenPup75_64 earlier, I thought I use it before I wipe the disk and move on to other tinkering stuff.

I did all we went thru with XenPup64, using 32bit stuff instead.
Same result, both imagescan and xsane can scan, but no preview.
No luck on epkowa either.

OK.
Thank you Bill...

Mike Walsh · Joined: 28 Jun 2014 Posts: 5827 Location: King's Lynn, UK.

Curious, indeed.

I'm running my old SX218 printer/copier/scanner 'all-in-one' in (amongst many others) peebee's Upup Bionic.....one of the newest Pups there is.

I'm using elderly iScan data + driver packages from the time when I bought the thing.....around 6-7 years ago. Preview works perfectly for me, and always has done. P'raps I've just been lucky....

This same pair of packages enable the old Epson's scanner unit to work with every other Pup I use. The SX series were the immediate fore-runners to the WorkForce series, and used very similar firmware. In fact, my printer/scanner drivers are named as WorkForce ones, anyway.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is yet another stark illustration that 'newest is not always the best'. The entire greater community of computer users around the world have been conditioned to believe that you must always have the very newest of everything.....for 'safety's sake'. Hah!

(Admittedly, with Windoze you take your life in your hands with updates anyway. Do you run the risk of hackers getting into your system, or that of the updates themselves 'bricking it'? Laughing

)

So; how come I've been using what's considered an insecure , out-of-date system, running as root (ouch!), for years now.....and never had the slightest problem with it?

Something doesn't 'gel' there, somewhere.....

Mike. Wink

rcrsn51 · Posted: Wed 25 Jul 2018, 10:42 Post subject:

@Mike: You are looking at this from the perspective of a Puppy user who has come to assume that anything that works in the mainstream Linux world will also work in Puppy. Or will eventually work if someone takes the time/effort to make it work.

It's not clear what is causing this preview bug in the new Epson imagescan backend. It may be a conflict with JWM. It may work correctly in newer Puppies like Bionic if you get the matching driver package.

It would require a community member who was willing to purchase a new Epson unit and do a whole lot of testing.

Who knows why Epson built a new driver. Maybe their new units have a different scanning engine that doesn't work with epkowa. Maybe they want their Linux driver to provide more features. Their iscan app has already stopped working fully in some platforms and needs to be updated.

The point of the Stretch-live Starter Kit is to provide a light-weight platform similar to Puppy but be compatible with mainstream software like this Epson driver.

Pining for the "good old days" of epkowa is a waste of time.

Mike Walsh · Joined: 28 Jun 2014 Posts: 5827 Location: King's Lynn, UK.

Hi, Bill.

Agreed; I take your point.

My point was that the driver packages I use were new at the same time the SX218 was purchased. I'm willing to accept that Epson have finally started to use more up-to-date firmware; it's certainly overdue. AFAIK the vast majority of models released by Epson over the years have, till very recently, been served by less than a dozen driver packages.....indicating (to me at least) that the firmware had till that point been common to most models.

Mike. Wink