Introduction

Document Scanner is a document scanning application for GNOME It allows you to capture images using image scanners (e.g. flatbed scanners) that have suitable SANE drivers installed.

Building the flatpak with GNOME Builder

It is recommended to use the development flatpak for developing this application. That way you won't have to download all dependencies yourself and it'll be consistent between all distros.

1. Download GNOME Builder
2. Click the Clone Repository button in Builder and use https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan.git as the URL.
3. Click the Run button in the headerbar

Note that this flatpak requires access to all devices (--device=all), and so isn't made for general use. For this reason and until a more suitable solution is found to interact with a host saned, please don't try to publish it on Flathub.

Building manually from source

Install the dependencies

For Ubuntu/Debian:

$ sudo apt install -y meson valac gcc gettext itstool libfribidi-dev libgirepository1.0-dev libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libgusb-dev libcolord-dev libpackagekit-glib2-dev libwebp-dev libsane-dev git ca-certificates

For Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install -y meson vala gettext itstool fribidi-devel gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel gobject-introspection-devel libgusb-devel colord-devel PackageKit-glib-devel libwebp-devel sane-backends-devel git

For Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S meson vala gettext itstool fribidi gtk4 libadwaita gobject-introspection libgusb colord libwebp sane git

Get the source:

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan.git
$ cd simple-scan

Build and run:

$ meson --prefix $PWD/_install _build
$ ninja -C _build all install
$ XDG_DATA_DIRS=_install/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS ./_install/bin/simple-scan

Debugging

There is a --debug command line switch to enable more verbose logging:

$ simple-scan --debug

Log messages can also be found in the $HOME/.cache/simple-scan folder.

If you don't have a scanner ready, you can use a virtual test scanner:

$ simple-scan --debug test

This app works by using the SANE API to capture images. It chooses the settings it thinks are appropriate for what you are trying to do. Drivers have many options and are of differing quality - it is useful to work out if any issues are caused by the app or the drivers. To confirm it is a driver issue you can use the graphical tool (XSane) or the command line scanimage provided by the SANE project - these allow to to easily see and control all the settings your driver provides.

If XSane is also not working, then the issue could be caused by wrongly loaded backend. To enable debug traces on Sane, set SANE_DEBUG_DLL environment variable:

$ export SANE_DEBUG_DLL=255

When set, SANE backends will show informational messages while Document Scanner is running

Example:

With HP MFP 135a scanner, there is missing libusb-0.1.so.4 shared library, during loading smfp prioprietary backend:

[dll] sane_get_devices
[dll] load: searching backend `smfp' in `/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane:/usr/lib/sane'
[dll] load: trying to load `/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-smfp.so.1'
[dll] load: couldn't open `/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/libsane-smfp.so.1' (No such file or directory)
[dll] load: trying to load `/usr/lib/sane/libsane-smfp.so.1'
[dll] load: dlopen()ing `/usr/lib/sane/libsane-smfp.so.1'
[dll] load: dlopen() failed (libusb-0.1.so.4: No such file or directory)

Contributing

To contribute code create merge requests on gitlab.gnome.org. If you find issues please report them.

Translation

A lot of information about translation process can be found at GNOME TranslationProject. The translation files for Document Scanner User Interface and User Guide, are available here.

To be able to run Document Scanner in selected language, the LANGUAGE could be used. For example to run Document Scanner in Polish language:

$ LANGUAGE=pl XDG_DATA_DIRS=_install/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS ./_install/bin/simple-scan