It is pretty easy to scan a series of pages into a single PDF file if you’ve got a document feeder. It isn’t so easy to deal with flatbed scanners and multiple pages. Here’s how it’s done Continue reading Flatbed Scanners and Multiple Pages
Category Archives: articles
Improved Support
The introduction of Free In Twelve should be good for most people. One case where it isn’t good is where you’ve paid for a program just before it becomes free. Here’s how I plan to fix that Continue reading Improved Support
Free In Twelve
“Free In Twelve” is a new licensing model that I dreamed up. Others may have thought of it before me but, if so, I haven’t heard of it.
The concept is very simple. Think of Trialware, and swap the sequence. Pay, and then get a free trial. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Here’s why it isn’t…. Continue reading Free In Twelve
Adding Balances to GnuCash
How do you get balances into a new GnuCash file?
When I first setup the free GnuCash accounting system quite a few years ago, there was a wizard that walked me through the process. I just followed the steps and it did things to make everything work. To my recollection, it was a nice, easy and mostly straight forward process.
At some point it asked about opening balances and I just told it the answers and “stuff” happened. Everything just worked. That’s all fine at the time but if you want to set up a new file for a new year, you need an inkling of what the “stuff” was.
Continue reading Adding Balances to GnuCash
Document Scanning and Paper Size
Are you having trouble getting scans to be the right size?
I’ve had a few people recently report that their document scans were coming out full size instead of the correct paper size.
One person was doing a web-based solution – document scanning within the browser! (That really impressed me as we seem to be locking things down these days rather than making them more useful. There are important concerns so I’d never thought anyone could navigate through that; but he did.) I suspect there were many problems in getting to that point but the only problem remaining was the scans were coming out the wrong size.
Improved scanning to PDF for CmdTwain
CmdTwain 2.12 has been released and it produces better PDFs for multipage documents.
CmdTwain 2.11 provides a scan to PDF option. It works great for single page scans and it does support multiple pages. But, the two don’t work together quite as intended. People were reporting that the first page scanned was getting placed as the last page in the PDF.
The cause is due to how filenames (for the pages) are sorted within the program. It uses the whole filename including the extension during the sort. For backward compatability reasons, page one is always named (something).jpg and pages two on are named (something)-00002.jpg etc. The character ‘.’ is stored internally with a value of 46. The character ‘-‘ has a value of 45. This always puts "(something).jpg" after "(something)-(anything)" which is not how it needs to be.
CmdTwain 2.12 comes with an improved sort routine that handles these cases properly.
Scan Multiple Pages with CmdTwain
CmdTwain 2.10 was released a while ago and it has some really nice new features. The one that many of you will be interested in is the ability to scan multiple pages.
It has been able to scan multiple pages for a while now but, wow, was it hard! With version 2.10 that changed significantly. Here’s what happened …
Continue reading Scan Multiple Pages with CmdTwain
Windows Command Line Programs and the PATH setting
The Problem
If you use a lot of different command line tools you end up having to type a lot of paths. Every tool installs in a different directory so, to access each, you need to type a full path for every one of them.
Continue reading Windows Command Line Programs and the PATH setting
CmdTwain 2.03 even runs on Windows XP
A new version of CmdTwain has been released. This one rolls back the move to Visual Studio 2013 so that those of you still using Windows XP can also still use CmdTwain. CmdTwain 2.03 has some new features too – but its main focus is on working with all of your existing installations. Continue reading CmdTwain 2.03 even runs on Windows XP
CmdTwain Scanner Setting Names
CmdTwain has had the ability to send special commands to your document scanner for some time now. It wasn’t widely advertised but a few people who had unusual problems learnt of the unusual settings solution. Here’s the details … Continue reading CmdTwain Scanner Setting Names
