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.