2019-05-01_Linux_Format

14 LXF249 May 2019 http://www.linuxformat.com

byLinuxshoulddothejob.Checkthelist

ofsupportedhardwareathttp://sane-

project.organdpicka devicethatsuits

yourneedsandbudget.I haveuseda

Brother(samehere–Ed) laserprinterand

scannerinthepastandit workedwell.Now

I useanHPall-in-onedevicethathasthe

benefitofduplexscanning,withouthaving

tofeedthepagesintwice.

HPdevicesaresupportedbythehplip

driverpackage.Thisisopensourcebut

thescannersneeda binaryfirmwarefile

too.Hplip’ssetuputilitytakescareof

downloadingandinstallingthis,butit is

somethingofwhichyoushouldbeawareif

youhavea strictpolicyonusingonlyopen

sourcesoftware.

Forsoftware,I haven’tfound

anythingbetterthanGscan2PDF(http://

gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net). Thiswill

scana multi-pagedocumentandsave

it asa singlePDFfile– althoughit also

Q

Document

scanningworkflow

AfterusingLinuxfortechnicalwork

anddevelopmentfora while,I’dliketo

completelymovealloffice-relatedtasks

toLinux(ManjaroKDE)aswell.

Besidessomeminorissueswith

printers,themainimpedimentishowto

setupmydocumentscanningworkflow.

CurrentlyI scanallincomingdocuments

inonego,manually‘staple’theminto

individualmultipagePDFdocumentsand

storethemtoEvernote.

Couldyourecommenddocument

scannerhardwareandcorresponding

softwaretomanagetheworkflowand

storethedocuments?

RolandStadler

A

As far as hardware is concerned,

any scanner with an automatic

document feeder (ADF) that is supported

Gota burningquestionaboutopensourceorthekernel?

Whateveryourlevel,emailit [email protected]

supports several other formats. The

software enables you to save various

profiles, covering resolution, size, colour

depth, single- or double-sided and more,

which means setting up for a particular

type of document is as simple as pressing

the scan button, selecting a profile and

pressing Go.

There is also quite extensive post-

processing support. It can use unpaper to

clean up and de-skew scans, it can also

apply OCR (optical character recognition)

software to the scanned image, and save

a text copy of a page as a hidden layer

behind the scanned image. Although this

layer is hidden, it’s searchable, so you have

multi-page scanned images that can be

searched for a particular word or phrase.

There is no option to save to Evernote,

but if you use this service you probably

already have software to sync it with

your desktop, like NixNote, so you can

simply save to a directory that is synced

with Evernote. If you are saving sensitive

material to a cloud service, you should

consider encryption. You can password-

protect PDF files with pdftk and this could

be added as a post-processing hook in

Gscan2PDF, for example.

Eternal shutdown

I’m a happy user of Mint 19, but there are

a couple of things that intrigue/bother

me in Cinnamon. When booting, it shows

a message like this for a few seconds:

[0.004000] doIRQ: 1.55 No irq handler for

vector

[2.378397] Couldn’t get size:

0x800000000000000e

Gscan2PDF has plenty of options when it comes to

scanning and archiving documents.

Neil

Bothwick

counts FOSS

problems

in his sleep.

Answers

MINOLTAPAGEPRODRIVER

Q

Do you know if there is a Linux

driver for my Minolta QMS

PagePro 1200W laser printer?

AnnaBrand

A

As with most things printer-

driver-related on Linux,

the answer can be found on

openprinting.org, specifically

http://www.openprinting.org/driver/

min12xxw. This is a third-party driver

for your printer, so don’t expect

support from the manufacturer. On the

plus side, this driver has been around

for a good number of years and has

been reported to work well.

Download the relevant file for your

operating system: 32-bit or 64-bit

according to your processor, DEB

or RPM according to the package

manager used by your operating

system. If you aren’t sure of the

package format, Debian and its

derivatives, such as Ubuntu, Mint,

Peppermint and others use DEB.

Fedora, openSUSE and Manjaro are

among the distros that use RPM.

Your system may offer to

automatically install the package after

downloading, but usually it just saves it

to your ~/Downloads folder. To install

it, open a terminal and change to your

downloads folder by typing

$ cd Downloads

Type ls followed by Return to make

sure the file is there, then install it with

one of the following commands.

$ gdebi openprin2xxw

$ rpm --install openprinting-min12xxw

The first command is for use with

DEB files, the second for RPMs. Press

Tab then Return after typing either

one. Pressing Tab autocompletes the

file name, so this will work for any

version or architecture, without having

to type the full filename. Once

installed, there should be options for

several Minolta PagePro models when

you use your distro’s printer

configuration tool to add a new device.