Preface ======= The SANE standard is being developed by a group of free-software developers. The process is open to the public and comments as well as suggestions for improvements are welcome. Information on how to join the SANE development process can be found in Chapter :numref:`chap:contact`. The SANE standard is intended to streamline software development by providing a standard application programming interface to access raster scanner hardware. This should reduce the number of different driver implementations, thereby reducing the need for reimplementing similar code. About This Document ------------------- This document is intended for developers who are creating either an application that requires access to raster scanner hardware and for developers who are implementing a SANE driver. It does not cover specific implementations of SANE components. Its sole purpose is to describe and define the SANE application interface that will enable any application on any platform to interoperate with any SANE backend for that platform. The remainder of this document is organized as follows. Chapter :numref:`chap:intro` provides introductory material. Chapter :numref:`chap:environ` presents the environment SANE is designed for. Chapter :numref:`chap:api` details the SANE Application Programmer Interface. Chapter :numref:`chap:net` specifies the network protocol that can be used to implement the SANE API in a network transparent fashion. Finally, Chapter :numref:`chap:contact` gives information on how to join the SANE development process. Typographic Conventions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Changes since the last revision of this document are highlighted like this: