Re: [PLUG] mac os x scanner NOT printer

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Sunday, February 16, 2003, at 10:13  AM, Fred K Ollinger wrote:

> Whatever it takes to get this scanner working. I just want her to be 
> able
> to do it. She's very far away, and I don't think I'd be able to make 
> it to
> her place again. I just want to tell her what to do to get this 
> working.
>
> > In any case, has she got Photoshop for Mac OS X? (Does Adobe even
> > make that? I presume that they do...) If so, same deal, presuming
> > the scanner speakes TWAIN; just do an "Acquire..." from the File
> > menu, and pick TWAIN.
>
> No. She has photoshop for OS 9. The "aquire" used to work via twain in 
> OS
> 9, now it doesn't. So I guess that the scanner speaks twain. But it
> doesn't work anymore. :(

Epson scanner hardware "tends" to support TWAIN.
However, Epson seems to only support an ancient version of TWAIN (1.1) 
...

Epson's scanners/printers come with their own CD full of drivers for OS 
X.
There is a recently updated set of drivers for Jaguar (January) if your 
printer/scanner is older than that. There is also another set on the 
Epson developer site. But, at least for me, they don't seem to make any 
difference.

However, most all "current" Epson PRINTERS apparently work "out of the 
box" with the Apple OS X (CUPS) drivers provided. Many older models are 
supported via gimp-print.

Scanners, on the other hand are a different problem.

The problem seems to be that Epson's software (Epson Scan to File) 
works fine with this set of drivers, but not other things. (It 
recognizes my scanner as a TWAIN scanner.)

I have a brand new Epson CX5200 - "All-in-1" printer copier scanner 
(USB). It prints fine. And it scan's fine with the Epson software. 
However, I haven't yet found the magic combination that makes it scan 
with other packages - Readiris 7.6. Readiris documents the problem with 
the Epson TWAIN versions on their website, but as yet has no 
work-around. (They have one for OS9, but not for any version of OS X.)

Readiris also points out that they will utilize the Photoshop plugin if 
one exists. Supposedly, Epson has installed one... someplace. However, 
since I do not have Photoshop installed, it may not have installed one 
in the "Photoshop Plugin directory" -- and just not bothered to tell me 
that. Now if I knew where the "Photoshop Plugin Directory" was supposed 
to exist, and it's "expected" name, I might be able to dummy up 
something that will work. So far (10 days), I have not gotten a 
response from either Epson or Readiris on the problem, so I suspect 
that they have no answer -- but then again, their email support may 
just suck.

I havent' put all the pieces together yet into a logical whole, but OSX 
TWAIN support is apparently located in:

/Library/Application Support/TWAIN/
/System/Library/Frameworks/TWAIN.framework

/Library/Image Capture/TWAIN Data Sources
/Applications/Image Capture.app/Contents/Devices/TWAIN_UI.device

Image Capture is Apple's application. It identifies my scanner as 
"EPSON TWAIN 5"
using the "TWAINBridge.app" interface.




T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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