Printing and Scanning on the OS/2 Platform by Tony Butka

Gee, back from the road again for an intermittent INK column. I think this summer will be less hectic than the rest of the year, and I'll try to get a few columns up on the website. For now, there's a lot going on in the OS/2 world of printing and scanning tools.

First, for you scanner junkies out there, Sane for OS/2 is about to have a new release with updated drivers. The current package is Tame 1.03a , and includes support for a number of Canon, Epson, HP, Mustek and Umax USB scanners. There is a testing build of the new Tame 1.0.3f, available at:

Note: if you don't have current OS/2 USB scanners, go off to eComStation.com, and grab them. Anyhow, very good stuff is finally available for OS/2 and USB scanners, and a big round of thanks to Paul Smedley for keeping us up to date with this important tool!

Next, it looks like Serenity Systems is still working on OpenOffice 2.0 for us. As a teaser (as well they ought to after taking my subscription money) and proof that they are keeping the faith, there are some screenshots up at:

Ok, moving right along on the printing front, there is a beta available of Lucide, a joint Netlabs/Serenity Systems project to produce a document viewer for eCS which will allow you to bypass Acrobat Reader. It is designed to integrate into the Work Place Shell (WPS) for drag & drop ease of use, and will support more than just PDF file formats. There is actually a mailing list for bugs, and the program has a SOM based plugin API for additional file support. The beta is available in the Betazone of:

By the way, drivers are available for the Brother 1230/1400 series of printers with the latest IBM printerpak, for those using these printers. You can link from:

And in a final bit of information, there was a recent post to the VoiceNews list that Mensys has obtained all rights for the WIN32PRN project (the brainchild of Vitaliy Tymchyshyn from the Ukraine). This is exciting, since the idea behind the project is to be able to use Windows printer driver dll's under OS/2. Stay tuned for further developments...

In the meantime, you can reach me at tony@scoug.com. Take care.

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.