at the temporal coordinates: 9/27/01 9:39 AM, the entity known as Marco
Mailand at Newton2k1_at_mac.com conveyed the following:
>
> john_fraser_at_mac.com wrote:
>
>> A typical serial scanner doesn't take much to work. a Quick signal
>> to tell it to scan (and where) and then it basically = sends the
>> data....
>>
>> I already have an intercept serial cable created to find signals
>> carried over the cable and shouldn't take long to create= a quick
>> driver. The problem I have... Will be the newton methods of file
>> storage etc.
> I think your work would be nice and interesting but probably not very
> helpful to most Newton users. How many will have access to exactly that
> model of scanner you'll write the driver for? Probably only a handfull,
> since most scanners are for SCSI or USB.
Well, since they've just announced they're no longer going to support Macs,
there's likely to be a lot of these (PaperPorts) coming on the market. Lots
of angry folks there, because Visioneer apparently uses a proprietary format
to store the scanned documents and has never provided a convenient way to
translate this to a 'normal' format. The result, if folks upgrade their OS,
they lose access to all those docs.
Of course, come to think of it, if the data is sent over the serial line in
this proprietary format, then this project has no chance of success. If
it's only stored that way by the software, then perhaps there's a chance.
>
> Another approach which I use from time to time and which is much easier
> and sort of standard is to use a normal fax machine and fax whatever has
> to be scanned to your Newton. Okay its not colour nor greyscale but for
> texts it is okay. Who'll need colours anyway on a Newton?
Exactly right. Just the opposite of the "fax machine as printer" trick.
- Eric.
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