sane-artec(5)

💅 sane-artec — SANE backend for Artec flatbed scanners

okay so bestie, welcome to sane-artec, a page from the SANE (that's Scanner Access Now Easy) family of manual pages. This one is all about the Artec scanners, and honestly? It's giving niche-but-iconic. Let's get into it 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

sane-artec — the SANE backend for Artec flatbed scanners. that's the whole vibe.

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So the sane-artec library implements a SANE — again, Scanner Access Now Easy — backend that gives you access to Artec/Ultima SCSI flatbed scanners. slay.

At the moment of writing, these are the scanners that are known to work at least partially with this backend (partial is still cute, okay?):

• Artec A6000C
• Artec A6000C PLUS
• Artec ViewStation AT3
• BlackWidow BW4800SP (which is a rebadged Artec AT3, iykyk)
• Artec ViewStation AT6
• Artec ViewStation AT12
• Artec AM12S
• Plustek 19200S (rebadged Artec AM12S, again with the rebadging)

And like, this manual page is generally updated with each release, but for the truly up-to-date tea on new releases plus extraneous helpful hints, the backend homepage is right here, no cap:

http://www4.infi.net/~cpinkham/sane

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🦋 CONFIGURATION 🦋

The contents of the artec.conf file? It's a list of device names that correspond to Artec scanners. That's it. Empty lines get ignored, and lines starting with a hash mark (#) get ignored too. If you need the details on what actually constitutes a valid device name, go read sane-scsi(5) — she explains it better than I ever could 🫶

Here's a sample file, copied exactly, look at her go:

# artec.conf
#
# this is a comment.
#
# this line says search for any SCSI devices which are scanners and have
#     a vendor string of 'ULTIMA'
scsi ULTIMA
#
# the next line forces the backend to assume the next scanner found has
#     the specified vendor string (useful for testing rebadged models).
vendor ULTIMA
#
# the next line forces the backend to assume the next scanner found has
#     the specified model string (useful for testing rebadged models).
model AT3
#
# now a line that actually specifies a device.  The backend is going to
#     assume this is an Artec/Ultima AT3 because we forced the vendor and
#     model above.
/dev/scanner
#
# once we hit a scanner device line, the forced vendor and model
# string are
#     'forgotten', so the vendor and model for this next device will be
#     determined from the result of a SCSI inquiry.
/dev/sge
#

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🔥 SCSI ADAPTER TIPS 🔥

okay so some Artec scanners come with an included SCSI adapter — a little bonus gift, we love that for them. If your scanner came with a DTC ISA SCSI card, you can probably use it with recent kernels (that's >= 2.2.0, to be precise) using the generic NCR5380 support. You just gotta pass this boot argument to the kernel, exactly like this:

dtc3181e=0x2c0,0

And as for the PCI SCSI adapter that comes with some newer Artec scanners? I have zero information on that one. none. not a crumb. 😭

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/sane.d/artec.conf — the backend configuration file (peep the description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below too, bestie).
• /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-artec.a — the static library implementing this backend.
• /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-artec.so — the shared library implementing this backend. This one's present on systems that support dynamic loading 💖

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• SANE_CONFIG_DIR — this environment variable specifies the list of directories that may contain the configuration file. On NIX systems the directories are separated by a colon (:), and under OS/2 they're separated by a semi-colon (;). If this variable isn't set, the configuration file gets searched in two default directories: first, the current working directory ("."), and then in /etc/sane.d. And if the value of the environment variable ends with the directory separator character, then the default directories are searched *after the explicitly specified directories. For example — and this is such a good example — setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would result in the directories tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being searched, in that order. periodt.
• SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC — if the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend. E.g., a value of 128 requests all debug output to be printed. Smaller levels reduce verbosity. Here are the SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC values, all of them, no skips:
  • 0 — print important errors
  • 1 — print errors
  • 2 — print sense
  • 3 — print warnings
  • 4 — print scanner-inquiry
  • 5 — print information
  • 6 — print less important information
  • 7 — print major called procedures
  • 8 — print all called procedures
  • 9 — print procedure info/data messages
  • 10 — print called sane-init-routines
  • 11 — print called sane-procedures
  • 12 — print sane infos
  • 13 — print sane option-control messages
  • 50 — print verbose data/debug messages
  • == 100 — print software RGB calibration data
  • == 101 — print raw data from scanner to artec.data.raw file
  • == 128 — print out all messages

Example, because we love a demo:

export SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC=13

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💀 BUGS 💀

Known bugs in this release, and I'm gonna be honest with you the whole way through:

• A6000C+ users with firmware v1.92 or earlier have problems with the backend, and the cause has not been determined. we simply do not know. 🙈
• Sometimes the backend is not particularly robust — you can possibly lock up the SCSI bus (and/or the machine) by not having patience enough when scanning. so like, be patient. actually be patient. this is a real warning, not a vibe.
• 3-channel gamma correction is not implemented, and single-channel gamma correction is not totally working on models other than the AT3. she's trying her best.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

sane(7), sane-scsi(5)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Chris Pinkham <cpinkham@corp.infi.net> — an icon, honestly.

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and that's the page!! 💖 This version you just read is from 11 Jul 2008, and it comes to you from the SANE Scanner Access Now Easy project — so if you see that date and that source floating around, you'll know exactly where this whole thing came from. go scan something cute for me!! 🦋✨🎀