[Hp3300backend-devel] update

[Bertrik S. <be...@zo...>]

Hi all,

Here's an update on what's going on.
(This list can definitely use some traffic, so here is some :P )

First, as many of you probably already know, there appear to me more
than just two niash chips (the niash00014 for the hp3300c and the
niash00019 for the hp3400c/4300c). I've had reports of hp3300c
scanners with niash00012 and niash00013 chips. Apparently the
hp5400 is even using a niash00033.
In the past, support for these different chips has been added as
lots of little kludges, mostly on how to initialise the chip
before starting to read the image data. My plan is now to
separate the specifics for each chipset in a separate function
(perhaps even a separate file) for each. This should make it easier
to make changes / add features / fix bugs for a specific chip,
without breaking the code for the other chips.

There are now 5 developers registered with the hp3300backend
project at sourceforge. Here's a short introduction
(please correct me if I'm wrong about something):
Ricardo Martins: has helped me greatly fixing lots of things,
wrote the patch-script, cleaned up the build system (makefile etc.)
wrote documentation and is investigating support for the *BSD OSs.
Brian Beattie has recently joined, has experience with figuring
out protocols and is looking into the HP4300.
Robert Jones has looked into parallel port scanning with the
Hp3400.
Frederic Leuba is looking at HP4300 specifics.

BTW, I have not heard anything lately from HP regarding Linux
support for scanner with niash chipsets.

All the best,
Bertrik