DTWAIN Features

The DynaRithmic TWAIN Library (DTWAIN) is a programmer's library that removes the stumbling block of implementing the TWAIN image retrieval in their applications. The DTWAIN DLL can be used by any language that supports Dynamic Link Library calls.

If you're tired of attempting to get TWAIN image retrieval implemented within your application successfully, or do not want to get bogged down in the details of the TWAIN specification, this library is exactly what you need!

The following is just a few of the major features that DTWAIN offers to the developer:

Image retrieval for any TWAIN compatible device: With DTWAIN, you can easily incorporate within your application the ability to retrieve images from any TWAIN compatible scanner, digital camera, or image database. With DTWAIN, the application can

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Save acquired images to BMP, TIFF (single or multi-page), GIF, ICO, PCX, DCX, Targa, PNG, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PSD, PDF*, Postsript*, WMF/EMF, WBMP, or Text (using a supported OCR Engine) formats automatically, regardless of the make or model of the TWAIN device or Windows operating system that is running. Even the cheapest TWAIN scanners or digital cameras can acquire to any of these formats.

•	Set the image acquisition size. You can acquire any portion of the image that the selected TWAIN device allows.

•	Duplex scanning support (including the ability to scan duplex documents for simplex devices).

•	Blank page removal, even if your TWAIN device does not support this natively.

•	Optical Character Recognition support. You can read files with a supported OCR engine, or acquire to text files using the OCR engine to translate images to text.

•	When acquiring images to files, you can choose between a novice mode of operating DTWAIN, and the advanced mode for more control of your TWAIN devices.

Application Friendly: There is no need to implement an arcane and hard to manage structure to your program source code just to accommodate the TWAIN specifications. Normally, implementing TWAIN in an application meant a lot of time restructuring existing program source. Once your application was restructured, you had to make sure that the TWAIN code worked, which by itself is very error prone. Since DTWAIN works by making a few function calls, your efforts are transferred from implementing TWAIN to the other tasks that your program performs. There is no need for TWAIN to take over your application logic and structure. Also, the application no longer needs to handle TWAIN triplets, state transitions, and code messy and error-prone event loops!

Use languages other than C or C++: If you program in other languages besides C or C++, with DTWAIN you can implement TWAIN within your non-C/C++ application. DTWAIN allows you to implement TWAIN within your application if you program in Visual Basic, Delphi, or any other language that can call DLL functions.

Negotiate a TWAIN device's capabilities: With DTWAIN, you can set or retrieve a TWAIN device's capabilities. For example, the scanning resolution, whether to use a document feeder, gamma correction, contrast, etc.

Extensive Error Handling: Whenever TWAIN fails to do a certain task, DTWAIN can inform the application by providing the number of the last error that occurred, as well as a meaningful error message. The error messages are contained in a separate resource, so editing the messages can be easily done by using any resource editor.

Acquire Images to a DIB or File: DTWAIN allows your application to acquire an image to a Device Independent Bitmap (DIB), a compressed image, or an image file or set of files (many image types are supported). Since almost every imaging library can handle DIBs, this makes easy integration between DTWAIN and other third party (or your own) imaging libraries.

Acquire Compressed Images: DTWAIN allows you to acquire images using compression method that is supplied by the Source. Acquiring images using compression is a requirement if you want to take advantage of a high-speed scanner.

More support for the TWAIN specification: Unlike some libraries that may throw in some minimal TWAIN scanning support, the DTWAIN library has a lot more support for TWAIN Version 1.x and 2.x specification. Whenever a new TWAIN specification comes out, DTWAIN will support those features also.

DTWAIN includes an optional "novice mode", where you can acquire and save images to files with a single function call: Optionally, your application can acquire and save images with a single function call!

The above are just a few of the features. The best way to test the power of DTWAIN is to check the list of functions that are at the developers disposal, as well as actually using DTWAIN compared with programming the 'raw' TWAIN specification.