Nautilus Scripts for Tablet screen rotation

After some workaround in the past, I started using nautilus scripts to rotate my Tablet display together with the stylus and eraser.
(I moved this topic now to a separate post, because the original post is outdated)

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display 180 degree
xrandr -o inverted
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate HALF

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display 90 degree to the left
xrandr -o left
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate CCW

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display back to normal
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate NONE

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display 90 degree to the right (to take notes)
xrandr -o right
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate CW

Migrating from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx to 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar on HP Compaq TC4400 Tablet PC

For these 4 years I sticked with Lucid Lynx despite the lessening support and the increasing complications and deficiencies, because of the beloved Gnome2 interface and all the customization I made throughout the years I used it.
However, Lucid Lynx is not supported anymore, and the difficulties this bare fact caused me recently reached my limits.

I backed up all my data and profile files to an external hard drive, and erased the whole hard disk to start anew.

I gave Ubuntu 20GB space for the system, 5GB for swap space, and put /home to a separate partition.
I installed the 64-bit version (finally, after 7 years of using the 32-bit version on my intel dual-core cpu because the first ubuntu distro I set on it still did not cover my needs on 64-bit) of Trusty Thar.

Now what's next is the personalization.
Will I stick with Gnome2, or will I migrate to Gnome3 or Unity?

What do I need from Ubuntu?

• it should work with the HP Compaq TC4400's native features.
• Pen features: pen, eraser, pen-button, pressure-sensitivity
• Screen rotation for pen usage
• Screen mapping for multi-screen setup
• Display side located buttons (scroll jog dial, ctrl-alt-del)
• Pen activated buttons on the side of the display (have never worked with Ubuntu previously)
• Fingerprint Sensor on the side of the display (I never tested it in Ubuntu previously)
• Ambient Light Sensor (I never tested it in Ubuntu previously)
• it should support the functionality of nautilus scripts and bash scripts
• it should allow full control over the system from terminal
• it should support easy access of software, applications, files and folders, without having to remember any name at all, so basically it should support easy, icon-based and menu-based navigation, where the user only has to remember visually and motorically to be able to locate anything. (menus to navigate through with keyboard or mouse)
• it should constantly give feedback about system performance (System Monitor in top panel)
• it should have a file manager (nautilus) that makes copying and moving files easy (2 panel view F3), have favorite places stored to reach them easily (bookmarks), have compact view with small icons that allow a lot to be seen at once (compact view). It is also great to have tree view, to make file moving/copying even easier.
• it should have multiple desktop workspaces available
• it should allow switching between running software by clicking with mouse
• it should have a software center that allows switching between software versions (synaptic)
• it should be light on my hardware
• it should support working intensively with large xlsx, xls and ods files with a lot of cells being functions.
• it should support opening a lot of web browser windows simultaneously
• it should work with these specific software: 
• Dropbox
• Skype
• Rescuetime and Toggl
• keepass2 and keepassX
• Plex Media Server
• imagemagick, pdftk, mkbitmap, scanimage and other command line image manipulating tools I'm used to work with

SD card failing...

I got these kind of errors with my microSD cards when I want to write on them. One is a 32GB SDHC the other is a 2GB SD.

in nautilus

Error creating file system: helper exited with exit code 1: Error calling fsync(2) on /dev/mmcblk0p1: Input/output error

with cp

cp: cannot create regular file `/media/Zene/test.mp3': Input/output error

with rsync

rsync: rename "/media/Zene/.test.mp3.FUG0AR" -> "test.mp3": Input/output error (5)
rsync: mkstemp "/media/Zene/.test.jpg.MMYg55" failed: Read-only file system (30)
sent 149488152 bytes  received 183 bytes  499126.33 bytes/sec
total size is 149469329  speedup is 1.00
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1060) [sender=3.0.7]

and after this the drive was empty once again :-/

even in windows7, SD card dismounts after copy finished and almost everything disappears from the drive. SD slot did not come up on win7.

regarding the mp3 player I wanted to prep for usage with sd card, the files have to be loaded one after another to keep the order of the songs of the albums.

to copy sequentially use {rsync -v -r source/. for local folder/ dest} for directories.

~$ sudo fsck -v /dev/sdcard
can write out interesting information, but has been no help regarding this problem.

Mplayer music playback with playlist

the command to use:

$ mplayer -playlist playlist.txt 

to make a playlist:

1. go to the directory that contains the files you want to make a playlist of.

2.

$ find . -type f -name "*.mp3" | sort > directory_playlist.txt

3. edit txt file so it has the full path (not necessary)

to do the same with a one-line command (if you do not need to edit the playlist):

$ mplayer -playlist <(find /directory/of/your/music/ -name "*.mp3" -type f | sort)

hit enter for the next track

cit crtl+c to break playback

A couple of useful commands with or within mplayer:
-shuffle : shuffle playlist
-loop : play the playlist repeatedly (can be combined with -loop)

Modify PDF pages as images, than reintegrate

what just has happened?!

I successfully reintegrated a modified PDF in the original file!

wow! that is definitely a level up in image-pdf editing for me.

pdftk input.pdf cat 2 output page2.pdf

pdfinfo page2.pdf 
Page size:      595 x 842 pts (A4)

pdfimages page2.pdf img

identify -verbose img-000.pbm
Geometry: 2496x3440+0+0
  Resolution: 72x72
  Page geometry: 2496x3440+0+0

  Modified the image through Gimp. Open, Edit, Save -> Export -> click Ok whenever needed.

convert img-000.pbm -resample 300x300 -resize 2496x3440 img2.ps

identify -verbose img2.ps
  Geometry: 599x826+0+0
  Resolution: 72x72
  Page geometry: 599x826+0+0

ps2pdf12 -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dFIXEDRESOLUTION img2.ps page2_v2.pdf

pdfinfo page2test4pdf.pdf 
  Page size:      595 x 842 pts (A4)

pdftk A=input.pdf B=page2_V2.pdf cat A1 B A3-end output output.pdf

Creating searchable PDFs on Ubuntu 2nd try

Need be:

• image layer over text layer
• good character encoding for Hungarian ű and ő chars
• good placement of words and lines
• fair enough good recognition
• handling more column layout

1st try was Tesseract output hocr embedded with hocr2pdf in a pnm file.

• image layer over text layer - YES
• good character encoding for Hungarian ű and ő chars - NO
• good placement of words and lines - NO
• fair enough good recognition - YES
• handling more column layout - NO

the strangest is, that hOCR editor does not handle well the tesseract output hocr. actually it does not handle it at all, showing html tags and everything where the editable text shoud be...

2nd try is: OCRopus 

I had no success installing and using orcopus.

• "recognize" does not handle languages, and/or I could not find a Hungarian data file for it.
  it works like: ocroscript recognize input.pnm > output.html
• rec-tess-complete should recognize through tesseract, and import language files with the --tesslanguage=hun option, but instead I got this error:
  Unable to load unicharset file /usr/share/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/hun.unicharset
• so I unpacked the hun.traineddata like this:
  combine_tessdata -u hun.traineddata hun.
• and put the files to /usr/share/tesseract-ocr/tessdata/
• however I got this error:
  Error: Illegal malloc request size!
  Fatal error: No error trap defined!
  Signal_termination_handler called with signal 2001
• than I tried with --tesslanguage=eng and it gave me:
  ocroscript: /usr/share/ocropus/scripts//rec-tess-complete.lua:52: attempt to call global 'hardcoded_version_string' (a nil value)
• so I searched and found a patch, and installed it like this:
  patch /usr/share/ocropus/scripts/rec-tess-complete.lua rec-tess-complete3_r1308.patch
• and now it gives me (with "eng")
  ocroscript: /usr/share/ocropus/scripts//rec-tess-complete.lua:61: Leptonica is disabled, please compile with it or don't use it!

I already have the newest tesseract on board, but I failed to manage a newest ocropus installation. it had too many unknown aspects with python and all...

results with ocropus 0.3.1-2 recognize and merged with hocr2pdf:

• image layer over text layer - YES
• good character encoding for Hungarian ű and ő chars - NO
• good placement of words and lines - NO (makes large characters, I cannot even tell which line it should be)
• fair enough good recognition - NO (because of english training data)
• handling more column layout - DON'T KNOW (text was too big, it was impossible to tell)

maybe the big text was because of the dpi of the image... I should check on this to at least be able to qualify the layout option... nope, it did not help... at all.

...to be continued with:

3rd try is: Cuneiform

4th try: Adobe Acrobat XI on Windows

Creating searchable PDFs on Ubuntu 1st try

Process is the following:

1. have a good resolution image in leptonica allowed format to use with tesseract: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, PNM ,GIF and WEBP.
2. produce hocr output like
   tesseract image.pbm textfile -l hun hocr
3. merge image and hocr to searchable pdf in hocr2pdf: image layer on top of text layer like
   hocr2pdf -i input.pbm -o output.pdf < textfile.html

First impressions:

• character encoding after hocr2pdf is off
  setting character encoding in html file header to ISO-8859-2 or Windows-1250 does not help.
  "ő" turns "Q" and "ű" turns "q" :-(
• 2 columns was not recognized automatically in tesseract
  psm option does not solve this
  this is probably impossible in the current version.
  have to try out another way to produce hocr with an ocr software that handles layout.
• font sizes are chaotic
  I think this probably depends on the bbox size and therefor on the ocr software.
• output file size is 159kb from a 818kb pbm, which is way too big.
  this cannot be helped if the pdf is not generated with my own methods...
  

Anyhow, this looks like a disaster :-( character encoding has to work.

Istalling Tesseract

Thanks to THIS post I was able to install tesseract 3 on 10.04 Ubuntu. This is how:

Install Tesseract
Get the required packages available in the repositories:

sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev
sudo apt-get install libjpeg62-dev
sudo apt-get install libtiff4-dev
("sudo apt-get install zlibg-dev" is suggested in the Tesseract readme but isn't available. I found I didn't need this.)

I picked this up from a comment made, you need to be able to compile and make the software. Ubuntu needs some packages to help do this. For many of you these may already be present and installed but it doesn't hurt..

sudo apt-get install gcc
sudo apt-get install g++
sudo apt-get install automake


Download this program which can't be gained with apt-get:
http://www.leptonica.org/download.html version 1.70
unpack, navigate to the folder in terminal, and run:

./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig


Now we can actually get and install Tesseract!

download tesseract: https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/downloads/list version 3.02.02
unpack, navigate to the folder in terminal, and run:

./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig   (<-- important="" is="" p="" this="" very="">

Now for whatever reason the training data isn't installed with this.

download whatever language you need and unzip to /usr/local/share/tessdata folder (requires root permissions)
also download osd traineddata from for example here

try with:
sudo nautilus

OCR Hungarian

After six long years I gathered my courage to face the task of OCR-ing texts again.

Goals:

1.) searchable PDF and/or DJVU from image PDF or DJVU.
one guide for PDFs uses cuneiform to ocr, and hocr2pdf to emberd text in pdf.
another option is pdfsandwich

2.) formatted text file preferably HTML from image.


Utilities:

Tesseract:
homepage: http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract_(software)
Hungarian training data: http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/downloads/detail?name=tesseract-ocr-3.02.hun.tar.gz&can=2&q=hun (which I lacked six years ago)
Other projects using Tesseract engine: http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/wiki/3rdParty

Cuneiform:
homepage: http://cognitiveforms.ru/products/cuneiform/
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CuneiForm_(software)

hOcr2Pdf:
homepage: http://hocrtopdf.codeplex.com/

Burning DVDs and failing.

With my Samsung SE-208DB/TSBS Black.
It is connected to 2 USB slots, 1 directly and 1 with extension. 


GnomeBaker 
DVD+R, Speed: 8X, Mode: auto. 
1. Time: 71 min.
Output:

Writing an image:
I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings)
Using 321030_2052795755951_117000.JPG;1 for  Photos_2012_2/jul/321030_2052795755951_1177642115_n.jpg (321030_2052795755951_1177642115_n (1).jpg)
Total translation table size: 0
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 121887
Total directory bytes: 243712
Path table size(bytes): 1104
Max brk space used 108000
2174849 extents written (4247 MB)
Executing 'builtin_dd if=/home/user/Data25.iso of=/dev/sr0 obs=32k seek=0'
/dev/sr0: "Current Write Speed" is 6.1x1352KBps.
:-( unable to WRITE@LBA=16f290h: Input/output error
:-( write failed: Input/output error
/dev/sr0: flushing cache
:-( unable to FLUSH CACHE: Input/output error
:-( unable to SYNCHRONOUS FLUSH CACHE: Input/output error
Also failed.
this is simple non-sense. I have a brand new DVDRW, burned sucsessfully 3 DVD so far, and now it fails. This is unbelievable.




2. Time: 79 min.

Executing 'genisoimage -gui -V DiscLabel -A GnomeBaker -p à -iso-level 3 -l -r -hide-rr-moved -J -joliet-long -graft-points --path-list /tmp/GnomeBaker/gnomebaker-C0YY9W | builtin_dd of=/dev/sr0 obs=32k seek=0'
I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings)
/dev/sr0: "Current Write Speed" is 6.1x1352KBps.
Total translation table size: 0
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 224932
Total directory bytes: 428032
Path table size(bytes): 1850
Max brk space used 1e6000
2000215 extents written (3906 MB)
/dev/sr0: flushing cache
/dev/sr0: updating RMA

/dev/sr0: closing session





Here's a failure for 2 times:
Executing 'genisoimage -gui -V DataAngel_25 -A GnomeBaker -p A -iso-level 3 -l -r -hide-rr-moved -J -joliet-long -graft-points --path-list /tmp/GnomeBaker/gnomebaker-CC7X9W | builtin_dd of=/dev/sr0 obs=32k seek=0'
I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings)
Using 321030_2052795755951_117000.JPG;1 for  Photos_2012_2/képek facebookról Julinak/321030_2052795755951_1177642115_n.jpg (321030_2052795755951_1177642115_n (1).jpg)
/dev/sr0: "Current Write Speed" is 6.1x1352KBps.
:-( unable to WRITE@LBA=7c9d0h: Input/output error
:-( write failed: Input/output error
/dev/sr0: flushing cache
:-( unable to FLUSH CACHE: Input/output error
:-( unable to SYNCHRONOUS FLUSH CACHE: Input/output error

DVD playback

I bought an external DVD RW today. (Samsung SE-208DB/TSBS Black)

I had to install libdvdcss to be able to playback a regular DVD Video.

And still have to use -vo gl2 to get the picture right.

Get libdvdcss
Last version of libdvdcss is 1.2.13.
Our Debian/Ubuntu repository can be accessed by adding the following content to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/debian/stable/ /
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/debian/stable/ /
And by running
wget -O - http://download.videolan.org/pub/debian/videolan-apt.asc|sudo apt-key add -
libdvdcss is available through Git or by browsing the releases.

Go to Synaptic and browse libraries (without "verse") for libdvdcss.
Source: http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html

To play it with Mplayer:

For the complete list of available options, please read the man page. The syntax to play a standard DVD is as follows:
mplayer dvd:// [-dvd-device ]
Example:
mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdc

my command line looked like this:
 ~$ mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /media/DVDMEDIA/ -vo gl2

Video playback is lagging

Tips I've read some places:

What solved it:

using -vo gl2 option in mplayer
lie:
$mplayer myvideo.avi -vo gl2


Does not help:

• changing the refresh rate of the laptop display and the vga monitor to the same amount (75 or 60 Hz)
• installing mga_vid, or at least trying to install it.

Media file video stream showing nothing (black screen)

From one day to the other, video media files I could play fine earlier, stopped showing video output, and instead of that they put out a black screen, which held frozen any movement that was done in front of it (window openings, etc, like, when a software freezes...)

Solution came from this thread:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+question/166706

pietrino (pietrino) said on 2011-08-18:

#13

Thanks Eliah and sorry for the confusion I generated.
I manged to view video correctly in totem by alt+F2, typing "gstreamer-properties" and in the video tab selecting X window system (no Xv). This looks like a pretty general hint that might serve different people. In the case of vlc, others hinted at setting the X11 display in the video properties of the program, though haven't tried that yet.
Sorry once more

Multi-screen tablet usage: configuring the displays

ATTENTION! THIS POST IS OUTDATED!
In later editions of xinput it is possible to map the input device to the tablet screen automatically by using the 'xinput --map-to-crtc <device> <crtc>' option.
Check device with 'xinput list' and check crtc with  'xrandr'.
In my case the sylus was '12', the eraser '14' and the laptop screen 'LVDS1'

---

I had some time to take care about this problem of configuring the tablet screen to be able to take notes while reading stuff from the external display.

Here's my solution:

Make a nautilus script. It makes life easier.
You'll have to run all codes every time, otherwise this won't work.

Here's the pattern to use:

xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate [NONE | CW | CCW | HALF]
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet eraser' Rotate [NONE | CW | CCW | HALF]
xsetwacom --set "Serial Wacom Tablet" "TwinView" none
xsetwacom --set "Serial Wacom Tablet eraser" "TwinView" none
xinput -set-prop "Serial Wacom Tablet" "Wacom Tablet Area" x1, y1, x2, y2
xinput -set-prop "Serial Wacom Tablet eraser" "Wacom Tablet Area" x1, y1, x2, y2

Here's how to do it:
The amount to multiply resolution pixel numbers is: 24,2
You multiply with this number, and than round the number to a whole.

How to define x1, y1, x2 and y2?

Small size Color PDF

After years of struggling with color PDF-s, I realized today that color PS exists, which lead to a fast solution on the given problem.

Here's how it goes:

1. GSCAN2PDF
   scan image on 8-bit depth and 300 dpi resolution.
   save in PNM file format.
   this results in an approx. 20MB size file.
2. CONVERT
   resize to 50%
   convert bigimg.pnm -resize 50% smallimg.pnm
   file size abt. 5MB
3. PNMTOPS
   convert to ps
   pnmtops -equalpixels smallimg.pnm > smallimg.ps
   file size abt. 10MB
4. PS2PDF
   convert to pdf
   ps2pdf12 smallimg.ps smallimg.pdf
   */Sadly, I could not manage to have the pdf cropped to the proper size with ps2pdf, so I have to do it manually in the next step. However if You know the solution to this problem do not hold back on sharing it with me!/*
   file size abt. 200KB
5. PDFCROP
   crop pdf of unnecessary margin
   pdfcrop smallimg.pdf
   (resulting in smallimg-crop.pdf)
   final file size abt. 200KB

This is how you do a good quality color pdf from good quality large images.

...And a couple months later (19 May 2013) I realized that my method of producing black-and-white pdfs, which I use since years, is just as good to produce color pdfs as the above or even better because with the old method I do not have to use pdfcrop, ad the pdf page size of the color cover will be compatible with the b&w pages...

Learning to type

I'm trying out kTouch now, and creating a set of meaningful words for my own practice. Well, practicing letters is a must do, but it's much better to have regular words too...

Chrome & Shockwave Flash using 100% of CPU

I'm just making a note here:

Shockwave flash running on Google Chrome uses about 100% of my CPU capacity.

This causes the cooling ventillation to run high speed, which produces much noise, and it also causes the machine to gain a quite high heat.

Testing gscan2pdf output formats

Lineart 300dpi 260x200mm scans
123 pages

PDF
Downsample to: no downsampling

Compression: Automatic
FileSize: 29.1MB

Compression: LZV
FileSize: 29.1MB

Compression: ZIP
FileSize: 29.1MB

Compression: PackBits
FileSize: 47.4MB

G3 and G4 encoding didn't work for me.

Compression: PNG
FileSize: 30.4MB

Compression: JPEG 75% compressed
FileSize: 221.7MB

Compared to my method of converting pnm through ps to pdf:
FileSize: 22.4MB (This is the smallest pdf on 300dpi)

DJVU
FileSize: 13MB

Compared to my method of converting pnm to djvu:
FileSize: 13MB (Equal size)

gscan2pdf Session
FileSize: 591.1MB

PNM
Sum FileSize: 114.6MB

GIF
Sum Filesize: 33.5MB

PS
not working.

TIFF
Can change compression method (LZW, ZIP, JPEG, PackBits, G3, G4, none)
not tested

JPEG
Can change compression quality
not tested

Using the Canon LiDE 210 on Ubuntu

Now, that I got "Alice" (laptop) to recognize "Susy" (scanner), I will try out a variety of scanning software to pick the best for my needs.

Here's a list of "frontends" that work with SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)
(Here's a daemon for mapping scanner buttons, for the case I find the ideal software.)

This is what I do:
a) I digitalize black-and-white documents in large amounts.
b) I digitalize color photographs
This is what I need a scanning program to be:
a) FAST
b) accurate in color

The winner of FAST scanning of monochrome documents is:

gscan2pdf

Reviews follow below.

a) FAST scanning of monochrome text documents

Command Line Frontends

scanimage
installation: comes with SANE.

pro:
- easy to use
- easy to define scan area (x and y in millimeters)
con:
- can't be automated to scan repeatedly to numbered documents. -> NOT ANYMORE!

testing:

scanimage --mode Lineart --resolution 1200 >img1200.pnm
approx 50 seconds. it is so detailed it is basically grayscale. 17.1MB 10096x14173px
scanimage --mode Lineart --resolution 600 >img600.pnm
approx 10 seconds. good quality. a bit noisy. 4.3MB 5048x7086px
scanimage --mode Lineart --resolution 300 >img300.pnm
approx 6 seconds. good quality. same amount of noise as on res600. maybe it's better to scan res600 and resize 50% than to scan res300. 1.1MB 2520x3543px
scanimage --mode Lineart --resolution 150 >img150.pnm
approx 6 seconds. Quality not acceptable. 271.6KB 1250x1771px

further testing: I'll have to play with threshold and other parameters to maybe get a better result.

scanadf
installation: scanadf needs the SANE source code to be patched to install it. this means I should patch, configure, make and make install, which, now, I will not do.

Graphical Frontends

Eikazo
installation: through synaptic

pro:
- can configure all what scanimage can
- can save files numbered
- can do postprocessing
con:
- no pnm, only tiff or jpeg

testing:

Lineart with various resolutions and output file type

for some reason Eikazo likes to die on me. I set some parameters, scan, and then I cannot change anything anymore, and cannot scan anything anymore...

openDIAS
This is an archiving software. yes, it can scan using SANE, but it's main purpuse is to crate tagged, searchable a database from all the files you scan.
I don't need such a thing. I don't install.

gscan2pdf
pro:
- configuration is the same as scanimage with the same defaults
- can post-process: rotate, clear, OCR
- can save to a variety of files (pdf, gif, jpg, png, pnm, ps, tif, text, gscan2pdf-session, djvu). pdf and tif are with a variety of options on compression or downsampling.
- it's quick to scan. I just have to press the button everytime I'm finished positioning the next page.
- you can click "scan" button to queue the next scanning to save some seconds.
con:
- I found none so far.
- takes 13 seconds to reposition the head. But this is probably a hardware thing.
Testing #1:

I easily made the scanner to go post it's scannig size limits. No catastrophe happened, thank god. SANE ReadMe warns, that this type of abuse can damage the scanner hardware.
Okay, I think it was the "Page Options" "All" which is probably for Automated Document Feeder. I don't dare to change # to more than 1. Anyway, it's written in scanadf's manual: "Use of this program with backends that do not support ADFs (e.g. flatbed scanners) will likely result in repeated scans of the same document. In this case, it is essential to use the start-count and end-count to control the number of images acquired."
scanning quality, size and time results are the same as in scanimage.

Testing #2

In the reality, it takes 19 seconds to scan a 200x280mm page. It takes 6 seconds to scan 300dpi, and it takes 13 seconds to reposition. This is awful. I will have to see if there is something to be done to fasten the repositioning.

Canon LiDE 210 flatbed scanner on Ubuntu

So I got this brand new flatbed scanner: Canon LiDE 210.

I have read here, that it works with Ubuntu. Actually that was a good reason for picking this scanner. Remember, I still have the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS running on Alice.

This is how I got it work:

Sources: Bottomlesspit and Ubuntu Forums.

1.) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plaxx/random-fixes

2.) Open System> Administration> Software Sources

...go to "Other Software" tab

Edit "http://ppa.launchpad.net/plaxx/random-fixes/ubuntu lucid main"

Change "lucid" to "maverick"

(leave the source checked!)

3.) sudo apt-get update

4.) sudo apt-get install libsane sane-utils
5.) reboot

In the process of trying I installed the latest SANE and libusb, I don't know what kind of effect this had on the outcome.

This is what happened before I got "Susy" (this is how I named the LiDE 210) to work:

1.) I unboxed the scanner. Made a video of it, 'cause this little thing is amazing.

2.) Plugged it in the USB...

3.) ...nothing happened.

Oh, no problem, this wasn't Ubuntu if everything worked out of the box.

So let's see, what we can do to get the scanner running:

1.) Check the SANE site for details on how the scanner is supported:

genesys

1.0-62

CanoScan LiDE 210

USB

0x04a9/0x190a

complete

GL124 based, resolution from 75 to 2400 dpi

sane-genesys

2.) Install the newest SANE version (1.0.22)

3.) Install libusb-dev files through Synaptic

4.) Install the newest libusb version

5.) Plugging in the scanner again...

...still nothing happens.

6.) Restarting the computer...

...still nothing

7.) Trying out on Windows7...

...it works! Yeah! At least the product is functioning for sure.

Okay... let's go another round... how should an usb scanner work on Ubuntu?

1.) Checking Ubuntu Documentation.

2.) Checking Support Forums... Found something worth a try. (Changing the bottomlesspit thing's repository from lucid to maverick, as it is originally for maverick.)

3.) Doing the update end install thing again

4.) Restarting...

...and it works! :-) Finally.