Bug 450204

Summary:	Refuses to scan the whole of an A4 page
Product:	[Applications] Skanlite	Reporter:	David Jarvie <djarvie>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Kåre Särs <kare.sars>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	normal	CC:	a.stippich
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	2.2.0
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian stable
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description David Jarvie 2022-02-14 11:32:10 UTC

I tried to scan a page contained a box of text occupying about a third of the page at the top, plus a footer line. The preview showed the whole A4 page, with a red rectangle round the box of text. When I clicked Scan, it only scanned the part of the page outlined by the red rectangle. This was despite setting the Scan Area Size to A4 and setting the scanner specific options to A4. I could find no way to scan the entire page including the footer.

I then tried with another page, which again contained a box of text (this time occupying two thirds of the page) and a footer. Again, I couldn't get it to scan more than the box of text.

I could find no way of adjusting the red rectangle to expand it.

A previous version (not sure which) of Skanlite worked ok. This makes it unusable.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Windows: 
macOS: 
Linux/KDE Plasma: 
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.78.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2

Comment 1 Alexander Stippich 2022-03-05 10:37:46 UTC

Are you using Skanlite 2.2.0 or a more recent version? Can you retry with 21.12.3?

Comment 2 David Jarvie 2022-03-08 12:10:26 UTC

I'm using version 2.2.0. That's the latest version which is available on my Debian stable system.

Comment 3 Kåre Särs 2022-03-08 12:53:47 UTC

Hi, 

Unfortunately 10+ years ago I added automatic photo/region selection that is on by default. This is unfortunate as it is not very good for text documents. The automatic selection can be disabled in the settings of Skanlite. You can also click the clear-selections button below the preview to remove the automatic selections.

The option comes from libksane and  I think when we move to Qt6, we should change the default to off.

Hope this helps,
  Kåre

Comment 4 David Jarvie 2022-03-09 01:02:03 UTC

Thanks, Kåre. I didn't notice the clear selections button - showing as the 'delete' icon, it didn't mean anything to me in the context of scanning software. Also, I didn't think to look in the settings. I think that it would be a good idea to change the default.

I notice that it is possible to select a rectangular area by dragging the mouse. I tried scanning a document which showed 3 red rectangles after Preview. I then manually selected a portion of the document. It only scanned the single red rectangle which was wholly enclosed by the manual selection, and not any of the other red rectangles which were intersected by the manual selection. This seems strange behaviour. Wouldn't it be better for a manual selection to override automatic selections from the preview?

Comment 5 Kåre Särs 2022-03-09 06:06:11 UTC

Hmm... if you have multiple selections all of those should be scanned with one press of the scan button...

You can "save" the manual selection by clicking the '+' in the middle of the selection and the same way you can convert a "red/saved" selection to manual by clicking the '-' sign in the middle

Comment 6 David Jarvie 2022-03-16 12:17:02 UTC

That seems to work. The problem is that it really wasn't obvious (to me at least) how to adjust the selection for scanning. I didn't pay any attention to the '+' and '-' buttons, not realising that they were connected with selections. Certainly, changing the default to select the whole of the "scan area size" selection would help a lot, since that was the only control that I could find which was related to the scan area.