Use a Windows computer as a host to share a scanner with MacOS or Linux.
Share a Windows Scanner with OSX
Share a Windows Scanner with MacOS
Share a Windows Scanner Witfh Linux
If some day Microsoft ever stops sitting on their hands and creates a generic eSCL protocol scanner driver, this may evem then work for Windows to Windows Scanner sharing. When pigs fly.
THIS PROJECT IS NOT COMPLETE AND IS IN DEVELPMENT
This project uses the following pre-built binaries
CmdTwain from http://www.gssezisoft.com/ (web site down as of this writing)
BonJour Print Services for Windows https://support.apple.com/kb/dl999?locale=en_US
PHP for Windows https://windows.php.net/download/
Java for Windows https://www.java.com/download/ie_manual.jsp
As far as I can tell this should work in Windows 7, through Windows 10, so even an older Windows computer with your scanner driver installed may work.
Also, it should work for users that rely on drivers from VueScan, as VueScan provides a TWAIN interface with their built in scanner drivers.
This means it should work with a wide gamut of scanners , even older ones.
Clients can be:
Mac OS with built in driverless scanning Linux with either the eSCL driver bundled with newer versions of SANE or the separate Airscan driver https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan
Current Limitations (aside from code not yet complete) I have found no way to accurately auto-populate the features available from the scanner's TWAIN interface to the eSCL interface. This must be done manually by editing scannerconfig.conf. There are also some settings/preferences not inherited from the scanner that you can set in scanningconfig.php.
I have been using exclusively the built in PHP Development server to test this which is working fine. From my experience, Apache may need a fair amout of tweaking to get it to behave correcly. The problem with this is that it is running from a command prompt at start up. Not being a Windows guru, I am not sure if it can be run as a service.
Much like the aforementioned probllem I also must run dns-sd.jar (from Apple Bonjour) from a Windows commmand prompt resulting in yet another unwanted window.
How to: (using PHP Development Server) give your Windows host a fixed IP address (heretofore your fixed IP is referred to as , and set its hostname to a known value . Install PHP
Install Java
Install Bonjour
Install CmdTwain
Download this project ZIP
Copy fies in this project ZIP to C:\html
Start PHP Development server
cd C:\html
php -S :8000
Set options in
C:\html\scannerconfig.php (refer to scanners TWAIN interface for values)
C:\html\scannigconfig.php
Start Bonjour
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour
dns-sd -R _uscan._tcp local 8000
Connect with Linux or Mac OS client