Translate Simple Scan

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Here is the UI for 0.7.6 in Romanian:

The demise of the function key

I recently upgrade to a new Dell Studio 15 and retired my old Inspiron. One thing I've noticed is the function keys are now secondary - these keys are now multimedia/system functions by default and you need to use the blue Fn key to activate the old F1-12 behaviour. Other Dell and Apple laptops (at least) seem to be doing the same thing.

Is this the end of the function key? The Litl keyboard got rid of them entirely. The key combination to use them on my laptop is sufficiently difficult that they might as well not exist for me.

So this leads me to the conclusion:
- I can never rely on function key shortcuts in any software I write.
- The existing window management shortcuts (e.g. alt-F4 to close window) don't work anymore. Now I understand when people complain how applications don't consistently bind the same key to close window (Ctrl+Q or Ctrl+W or something else or nothing?).
- At the Lucid UDS we discussed Compiz keybindings - often these were bound to function keys. I notice the macbook uses the old F3 key for "show all windows". I hope some standard could emerge for these functions on PC keyboards.

I can't say I'm going to miss them overly.

Introducing Simple Scan

One of the goals I want to achieve for Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) is to make scanning really easy. So I've been working on Simple Scan:



Please try it and report any problems you have.

To install add the PPA and install the simple-scan package or build from source.

The GUI is a mess

Yes. This is the first functional release. The GUI is being redesigned for 0.8. The 0.7 release should contain all the functionality required for 1.0.

Who is simple scan for?

This application is designed for the 95% of users who just want to connect their scanner and quickly have the image/document in an appropriate format.

How does this relate to GNOME scan?

Simple scan does not use the GNOME scan to get the scan data. This is because Ubuntu 10.04 is a Long Term Support release and bringing the whole GNOME scan stack into main is risky (it was previously proposed for 10.04 but was not found to be stable enough). There is an open bug to change to gnomescan when that is appropriate.