simple-scan VS snapdrop

my HP LaserJet MFP 135w goes to 2400 dpi using the HP provided driver (https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/closure/hp-laser-mfp-130-printer-series/24494378/model/24494382?ssfFlag=true&sku= the file uld-hp_V1.00.39.12_00.15.tar.gz) and using simple-scan (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan)

The printer I'm using has excellent printing-capabilities from within Linux, however it fails completely, when it comes to scanning. I have tried Skanlite and Gnomes Document Scanner, but none of them lists the printer as a scanning-device.

The Document Scanner project is not in the immediate list, so you need to click "Clone Repository" and enter https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan to get it up and running.

Anyhow, if you want to give a go, this is what I've been using -> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan

> So what do printers have to do with any of this?

The original post was about zeroconf, and therefore the later multicast DNS-SD based discovery protocol [1]. Namely aireplay, airport, airprint, airscan based protocols that multicast their functionality and protocols via DNS to the 224.0.0.251 (or [ff02::fb]) addresses (on port 5353).

Printers these days do have primarily support for airprint + airscan so they work out of the box on MacOS with all the GUIs that the OS has to offer. Not so much for WSD or other protocols that Linux/Windows still need. CUPS or ghostscript support usually isn't complete for anything else than TIFF, because nobody seems to give a damn about implementing a PDF rasterizer on-device, let alone gutenprint or postscript/ghostscript support for their scanner devices.

Reading through the sibling comments you have to recognize that my interpretation of "what is working" is a different one than a developer's perspective. If someone without programming/linux configuration knowledge cannot print or scan via WiFi, your tool is pretty much useless and didn't replace the 100 fragmented alternatives that existed before it already.

My complaints were mostly about avahi's integrated discovery tools like avahi-browse and avahi-discover which are only tools to discover printers, but are themselves useless for printing or scanning on their own (and they're not transport-level libraries for DNS-SD IANA registered protocols either).

Literally the only scanning tool that works in the Linux world is "simple-scan" [2], which requires preinstalled "sane-airscan" and an integrated avahi-daemon in the resolv.conf/nsswitch.conf. Don't ask about parallel IPv4 + IPv6 support, because that's totally unsupported and will crash in multiple NAT scenarios the daemon in an endless loop, and is the reason why every Linux wiki will recommend to add "mdns4_minimal" to the /etc/nsswitch.conf file instead of "mdns_minimal". [3]

Coming back to my point: I mean, every developer can send a postscript file via bash to an IPP port, but I wouldn't call it a working UX or UI. When comparing the aforementioned shitshow with how everything is nicely working on MacOS, Linux is basically a bad joke when it comes to mDNS support. I mean, the technology is almost 15 years old now, and we still can't have nice printer support on Linux.

[1] http://www.dns-sd.org/

[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan

[3] e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/avahi

Snapdrop.net is one of many examples of the uses for this API, using it with WebSocket API allows endpoints on the same local network to distribute files and send data between them. We can find the source code for the project here.

similar: I have been using https://snapdrop.net/ for a few years now.

Localsend for sharing files once in a while, snapdrop is an online alternative. Syncthing to sync folders between devices.

Related projects:

- FlyingCarpet: direct transfer over local adhoc WIFI: https://github.com/spieglt/FlyingCarpet

- LANDrop: Drop any files to any devices on your LAN: https://github.com/LANDrop/LANDrop

- In-browser file transfer similar to Airdrop: https://snapdrop.net/

- Magic Wormhole: simple file transfer from computer-to-computer over the net: https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole

- Croc: similar to magic wormhole: https://github.com/schollz/croc

- Wormhole: user-friendly in-browser based e2e encrypted file transfer: https://wormhole.app/

I can’t 100% vouch for it, but snapdrop.net seems like a good cross platform option here.

https://snapdrop.net/. Been using it for years for quick iOS > Windows transfers. Works great and unique names mean you know what device you’re sending to!

I use snapdrop.net. Doesn't necessarily need an app.