Winn L. Rosch Hardware Bible, Sixth Edition

Application Interfacing

As with other input devices, scanners have their own control and signaling systems that must link to your software to be used effectively (or at all). Early scanners used their own proprietary application interfaces to relay commands and data. Consequently, each scanner required its own software or drivers. Oftentimes you could only use the scanner manufacturer's own software to grab images.

Thanks to a concerted effort by the scanner industry, that situation has changed. Now you can expect any scanner to work with just about any graphics program. Moreover, scanning is consistent across applications. The same screens that control your scanner in PhotoShop appear in Corel Photo-Paint.

Central to this standardization is ...