[sane-standard] Using id instead of title for well known sources

[m. allan noah]

On 1/20/07, Étienne Bersac <bersace03 at laposte.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As i review the SANE 2 standard, i notice that 'source' option use title
> as string. Those strings are longer (especially for ADF). But the
> frontend has to know wether a source is ADF or manully feeded, in order
> to loop or not the acquisition until "NO_DOCS" is returned. Therefore,
> frontend needs to parse this string. Using ids instead of title helps
> parsing source.

i will maintain that the frontend does not need to parse this string in order
to determine the need to continue scanning. the backend should tell the
frontend/user how many pages remain with another well-known option.

perhaps 'page-remain':

0 for a flatbed or no more pages in any auto feeder (or a manual)
-1 for a standard adf or film reel with unknown pages still to go,
> 0 for an auto feeder with a known number of pages (multi-slide holder)

then the frontend can ask the user 'how many images to aquire?' and can
clamp that value using page-remain. if '-1', the frontend can make the
question open-ended. the default could be 'all'.

the exact values in the 'source' option only need consistency for
translation purposes.

allan

-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"