TWAIN/Microsoft
Positioning Statement
A portion of the TWAIN Working
Group’s vision statement includes the following sentence:
"The TWAIN Working Group is a
not for profit organization which represents the imaging
industry to provide and foster a universal public standard which
links applications and image acquisition devices."
The two key messages are
representing the imaging industry and support for a universal
public standard.
Our strong commitment to this
vision resulted in our contractual agreement with Microsoft to
ship the TWAIN Data Source Manager with Windows 98 and Windows
NT 5.0 as an integral part of their Still Image Architecture (STI).
As individual vendors, many of our organizations have checked in
STI Compliant drivers into Microsoft’s Windows Hardware
Quality Labs (WHQL) for certification and inclusion with the
operating systems.
It is the TWAIN Working Group’s
intention to continue to work with Microsoft as they evolve
their new scanning API. Our mission today and in the future will
be to ensure the changing needs of the imaging industry are met.
Microsoft has committed to meet
with the TWAIN Working Group on an on-going basis to solicit our
feedback and expertise regarding image acquisition technologies.
In addition, the TWAIN Working Group will address compatibility
issues, define potential deficiencies and research new
technologies proposed by Microsoft.
In the interim, the TWAIN Working
Group will continue to evolve the TWAIN standard forward. The
1.7 specification, released in August of 1997, addressed the
requirements of the production scanning environment. In a short
period of time, we will publish the 1.8 specification, which
includes a robust feature set for digital cameras and expands
upon direct programmatic control of scanners begun with 1.7. A
1.9 specification is under consideration for early 1999.
The TWAIN Working Group Board of
Directors includes Adobe Systems, Canon Information Systems,
Eastman Kodak, Fujitsu, Genoa Technologies, Hewlett Packard,
Intel Corporation, J.F.L. Peripheral Solutions, Kofax Image
Products, Ricoh Corporation, and Xerox Corporation.
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