HAL and scanners

[Joe Shaw]

Hi,

Étienne Bersac wrote:
> Gnome Scan is based on SANE. Gnome Scan provide a library that wrap sane
> into a glib-ish API and a library of widget and a collection of
> applet/plug-in. I wonder if i will be able to drop the glib-ish API if
> hal allow this. I mean, HAL handle scanner either with sane or whatever
> you want. If HAL does not, gnome scan only need usual hal device info
> plus the sane device name in order to use sane. A simple
> scanner.sane.device_name is enougth.

The important thing to remember about HAL is that it's primarily used 
for device enumeration.  The acronym "hardware abstraction layer" is 
mostly a misnomer.

It's still the responsibility of applications to use the SANE, or 
gnome-scan, or whatever APIs to do the scanning.  HAL hopefully removes 
the necessity on the user to have to provide information about their 
scanner, the device node (if people have to provide /dev/bleh, we lose), 
etc.

So it sounds to me like you'd want to keep the glibish API, but have it 
be a pretty simple wrapper, with the widgets and plugins.

Joe