Working with DLL files

[Mechanerd]

Hi, I am new to TWAIN and only in the first phase. Before I buy a Scanner and download TWAIN I need to know if a TWAIN Driver (.DLL file) will allow me to control the scanner fully. My first choice for scanner is likely to be a Fujitsu fi-6130dj (if this helps). I am trying to create a program that will automatically run the scan, then save the documents to a PDF File. The only thing the user should be doing with the scanner is loading the pages. Is it possible for the TWAIN driver to control the Scanner for everything else? Thank you for your time.

[spike]

Hi Mechanerd. You can probably control the scanner pretty completely through TWAIN if it has a good TWAIN driver, and the Fujitsu fi-series have good TWAIN drivers. Of course it depends on exactly what you mean by “fully”…

You are not likely to be able to get PDF directly from the scanner using TWAIN. That’s a relatively recent and completely optional feature in TWAIN, and I haven’t seen any drivers that support it.
I know that the software shipped with many scanners can scan to PDF, I’m just saying that through the TWAIN API, you are not likely to be able to request scans in PDF format.

If you want to scan to PDF, you have several alternatives:
(a) license a 3rd party library, either specifically to generate PDF, or an imaging toolkit that includes TWAIN support and PDF output. After working with TWAIN and TWAIN developers for over 10 years, I highly recommend using some kind of TWAIN library. [Disclaimer: I work for such an imaging toolkit vendor]
(b) Use a scanning utility that can scan and write PDF. There are vendor-independent products, and many scanner vendors offer such a utility for their products. You might be able to control Acrobat to do this.
(c) Use a proprietary interface to the scanner, instead of TWAIN, assuming such a thing exists for your scanner and you can get the scanner vendor to give you access.

I’m qualified to talk about option (a), but not much (b) or (c), so I’ll let others chime in if they have advice on those.

[Mechanerd]

Thank you Spike. Although I’d prefer not to add complication, I don’t mind using a 3rd party package to generate a PDF but will have to first test the system I purchase to determine what I will need. Thanks again. I was hoping for something simpler if it exists.

[spike]

I remembered the utility I was thinking of – TWAIN Commander by JSE Imaging Solutions:
http://www.jse.de/products.html#twaincommander2
Unfortunately it can only scan to TIFF or JPEG, so you need their other product ‘Barisei’ to convert those to PDF.
Still, those two products together might give you a command line/batch file solution, no programming required.

[Kaij]

@Spike: Thank you for bringing TWAINCommander into the discussion.

@Mechanerd: Good news, TWAINCommander has now also an option to scan direct into PDF files. So you can now scan with one command line call into the PDF file.

Best regards,

Kaij
http://www.jse.de

[Wallism]

Your discussion has benefited me alot.AND I’ll try to use Twain sanning dll to generate pdf files.Thanx.

[peterlee]

@Wallism wrote:

Your discussion has benefited me alot.AND I’ll try to use Twain sanning dll to generate pdf files.Thanx.

Hi, Wallism.
Have you ever tried the Twain scanning tool yet? Did it work well? I want to try it later.

Best regards,
Arron

[evanpan]

Hi, Peter.
Thanks for your reply. I wonder whether you have any exprience about pdf conversion process. Because there is something wrong with my pdf reader. I need convert pdf to image or other formats. Any suggestion will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Pan

[Author]

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