“SANE, “Scanner Access Now Easy,” is the de facto Linux
scanner interface, which you use to scan an image from an image
scanning device — such as a flatbed scanner — and save it to an
image file. The SANE tools are available in the Debian sane
package or on the Web at http://www.mostang.com/sane/.”
“As the acronym implies, getting a scanner to work on a Linux
system hasn’t always been smooth going. The SANE interface is
completely open, and its developers are making sure that it is
generalized enough to be implementable on any hardware or operating
system.”
“SANE works with a wide array of scanning hardware, but you’ll
want to make sure the scanning hardware you want to use is
compatible by checking the Hardware HOWTO and SANE’s list of
supported scanners. Once you have SANE installed and going, you can
scan images with applications like the GIMP image editor; do this
to scan images with a self-explanatory, point-and-click interface.
The rest of this column focuses on a command-line scanimage tool,
which comes with the SANE package.”