Planning Gnome Scan Inclusion

[Étienne Bersac <bersace03 laposte net>]

Hello all !

Since march, i'm designing and developping a Gnome Scan infrastructure.
See http://home.gna.org/gnomescan/index and Google "gnome scan" search
result in general. I've been sponsored by Google do work on this project
this summer. Mentored by Vincent Untz.

The project is far from integrated with the Gnome development process.
Because of its early stage. I'm waiting for Gnome SVN to drop Gna!
hosting (nice service anyway). But, as it become mature, i want to
include it officialy in the Gnome Desktop.

Here is what gnomescan provide :

      * libgnomescan : scanner access (based on libsane)
      * libgnomscanui : widgets using libgnomescan
      * flegita : a standalone utility for basic scan (ideal for you
        mother)
      * flegita-gimp : a Gimp plugin that use an advanced interface

Here is what is implemented :

      * scanner probe
      * scanner selection
      * preview
      * source selection
      * rotation
      * single acquisition
      * save to single file (png, tiff, jpeg and PDF).

Here is what is not implemented :

      * preview zoom
      * mass acquisition
      * different x & y resolution
      * multipage pdf
      * fixed area selection (a4 , us letter, etc.)
      * buttons handling

And *many* other features. (See http://live.gnome.org/GnomeScanning ).

Also, i would like to write plugins for Evolution, Abiword, Inkscape and
gthumb. Larry Ewing may write a plugin for f-spot.

I'm still working on improving infrastructure design. I've started
adding scanner support to hal (generating .fdi). I plan to write a dbus
daemon that handle device probe (receiving signals from hal and maybe
avahi) and handling buttons. This allow to get ride of the probe dialog
and more (buttons handling is quite exciting).

But that's a huge work. I plan to implement the dbus service only for
2.20. However, that would be nice to have a kind of preliminary Gnome
scan software in 2.18.

A kind of RoadMap should be :

      * 2.18
              * fixed area
              * preview zoom
              * x & y resolution
              * mass acquisition
              * multipage PDF
      * 2.20
              * hal scanner support
              * dbus service
              * buttons handling
              * easy scanner sharing (capplet, avahi publishing)

Later version will see OCR, fax, etc.

For 2.20, i want to split gnomescan in two parts : gnomescan and
flegita. gnomescan will consists of libgnomescan, libgnomescanui, dbus
service and capplet. Flegita consists of flegita, flegita-gimp and will
receive other plugins.

A key point is : does it worth shipping a pure library base app or
should we push for a service + library based app for 2.20. Do you want
gnome scan for 2.18 ?

Thanks for you comments and questions.

�ienne.
-- 
Verso l'Alto !