[sane-standard] network layer

[Johannes Berg]

Hi,

With the imminent release of a new d-bus version I somehow started to
hink if that could be used to provide a new SANE API. Here's why:

 * no need to implement an own network layer
 * makes it possible and easy to have callbacks for scanner
   buttons even over the network.
 * local and remote are handled identically, through d-bus
   (either the bus or just a direct connection), meaning
   that to write a scanning application you directly access
   the network layer via the d-bus library or a wrapper
 * one could supply a backend that behaves like the current
   net backend, but there's no need to
 * by using the bus, scanners are discoverable by applications
   (if set up for this)
 * multiple users of a single scanner can easily be handled
 * actual process separation between front- and backend

Disadvantages:
 * loading an image would currently mean to serialise it into
   the network layer and then de-serialise it again, but this
   can be avoided by exchanging shared memory segments.

What do you think? Should I investigate further on the shared memory
exchange, especially on how to do this in windows?

johannes
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