Scanning over a Network (Cannon Pixma MP499)
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Although I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet I am fairly sure I can send prints to my multi-function printer (which is connected to one of the Debian servers and uses CUPS) by simply sending it as LPR/LPD data (I got to this conclusion by digging around on these forums but haven’t had a chance to test it because I need to get some new ink first!) Anyway, it got me thinking about the scanner part of it. Some of the time I do my writing on an old typewriter when I’m in the mood to get away from modern technology (and it really does help focus if I’m in a block). I have in the past scanned in the documents using a MacBook and then done the OCR with Google Docs. It was OK but a bit of a faff to get a good output. Hunting around on The Internet I have come across some things but I still don’t know if what I want to do is possible which is scan documents over the network from RISC OS. There is the TWAIN scanner drivers—can these be used over a network? Any more thoughts would be welcome! |
Steffen Huber (91) 1945 posts |
I don’t think TWAIN on RISC OS has any links to network access. You can get a lot of TWAIN related sources from David Pilling’s archive of retired software: https://www.davidpilling.com/wiki/index.php/TWAIN I have no experience with Sleuth, but it is very old now. I have also no experience with STRing, but you can try to contact the author via E-Mail. I haven’t heard from Mark for a long time now however. |
Willard Goosey (5119) 257 posts |
Your server will need to be running the CUPS-LPD miniserver. My server is (old) slackware, not sure how to make sure this is running in debian (sorry) This works fine for me using RemotePrinterFS. The line I use in !print is: file to print to in PDFprinter→printer-connection(one line):
Obviously you’ll have to change address, queue name, and username… |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Well I tried that and nothing happened (no errors, no log messages that I could find…the print just appeared in the print queue for a fraction of a second and then vanished…poof!) Looking into it a bit further I worked out that nobody seems to mention anything to do with using cups-lpd on Debian so I’m a bit stuffed as to what to do next—the cups-lpd man-page suggests that it is compatible with systems but as far as I can work out there are no services I can enable that would allow it to work…I came across one reference that said something like “this has never been included in the Debian packages” Wondering if I should turn one of my old Pis into a dedicated print server and then use a different Linux distribution…? |
Willard Goosey (5119) 257 posts |
On my raspian jessie Pi3 the miniserver is in /usr/lib/cups/daemon/cups-lpd I haven’t messed with systemd services myself. Check the ubuntu forums and also this guy seems useful brain4free Though you’ll want to use the actual server, not a shell script to capture the output… Before you get too excited about using a Pi as a print server, make sure that any needed printer drivers are available as ARM binaries, some are x86 only. :-( |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Thanks for the link! I got it printing using the PoScript2 driver and a modified version of the guide in that link…so just text for now (and no scanning yet) but it’ll do until I can look into getting something from R-Comp. Will post a guide to my website when I get a chance so anyone using a new linux that works off systemd will be able to get printing up and running… |
Willard Goosey (5119) 257 posts |
Glad to hear it! :-) If you already have Samba running on the debian box it might be worth experimenting with !omniclient’s smb printer support. |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
oh…? that one must have slipped by me—had no idea that !Omniclient could access Samba shared printers… Is it something that is quite obvious or will it require a bit of tweaking to get working? edit: nevermind I just found the OmniClient section of the User Guide and it seems quite straight-forward so might give it a try at some point… |
patric aristide (434) 418 posts |
AFAIK sleuth was used for optical character recognition. Chris Gransden did a port of Tesseract which you might find useful: http://www.riscosports.co.uk/downloads.html Certainly worked fine on my BBxM. |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Thanks, that looks interesting and useful. Assuming that Tesseract works for me, or Sleuth, or STRing—it seems I just need to work on a way of controlling the scanner and getting the scanned images into RISC OS now…. edit: this is my 444th post and it just reminded me that at the weekend the football results were: East Fife Four, Forfar Five :—) |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7904 posts |
The other half picked up on that at the time. I’m not sure how many years since the comedic spoof we’ve been waiting for that specific genuine result. |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
I guess it had to happen eventually! For anyone who might be interested I have just created a quick guide to getting CUPS to work on RISC OS—hopefully it’ll be the start of many guides on my site but its early days yet! Let me know if you spot any bugs. |