SANE
More info
- Type
- Scanning API
- Platform
- Unix, Linux, *BSD
- Website
- sane-project.org
Scanner Access Now Easy — an open standard API for image scanners on Unix-like systems, the Unix world's answer to TWAIN.
SANE splits scanning into two halves: frontends such as xsane or scanimage that the user sees, and backends — the drivers — that talk to the actual hardware. A common API sits between them, so any program can drive any scanner that has a backend. The saned daemon can also export a scanner across the network.
The project began in the late 1990s as a free option on Linux, the BSDs and other Unix systems, where Windows' TWAIN did not exist. The name is a dry comment on how easy scanning usually was not.