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TWAIN is a standard for acquiring images from image scanners: an image capture API for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. The word TWAIN is not officially an acronym, however, it is widely known as an acronym for "Technology (or Toolkit or Thing) Without An (or Any) Intelligent (or Important or Interesting) Name". In computing, a scanner is a device that analyzes an image (such as a photograph, printed text, or handwriting) or an object (such as an ornament) and converts it to a digital image. ...
A application programming interface (API) is the interface that a computer system, library or application provides in order to allow requests for services to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them. ...
Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary operating systems by Microsoft. ...
The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ...
Overview The standard was first released in 1992. It is currently ratified at version 2.0 as of 28 November 2005 and is maintained by the TWAIN Working Group. TWAIN is typically used as an interface between image processing software and a scanner or digital camera. 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ...
November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
A SiPix digital camera next to a matchbox to show scale A Hasselblad 503CW with a digital camera back A digital camera is an electronic device used to capture and store photographs electronically instead of using photographic film like conventional cameras. ...
The disadvantage of TWAIN is that it does not separate the user-interface from the driver of a device. This makes it difficult to provide transparent network access. Whenever an application loads a TWAIN driver it is completely unattachable from the supplied manufacturer's GUI. To be precise, it is not a fault of TWAIN specification but of such device drivers, because they are not fully compliant with TWAIN. A graphical user interface (or GUI, often pronounced gooey), is a particular case of user interface for interacting with a computer which employs graphical images and widgets in addition to text to represent the information and actions available to the user. ...
Origin and background of the name The word TWAIN is from Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West" - "...and never the twain shall meet...", reflecting the difficulty, at the time, of connecting scanners and personal computers. The description "Technology Without An Interesting Name" originated from early working group activity, though they do not accept it as an acronym.[1] Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was a British author and poet, born in India, and best known today for his childrens books, including The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So Stories (1902), and Puck of Pooks Hill (1906); his novel...
Kevin Bier, chairman-emeritus of the TWAIN Working Group and the original author/editor of TWAIN 1.0 (with the aid of several others from seven companies), confirms authoritatively that TWAIN, while not officially an acronym, was conceived as referring to a "toolkit without an important name."
This non-acronym was inspired by Bier's contemporaneous reading of a collection of letters by Mark Twain. Bier reports that he finished reading one such letter at nearly midnight one evening, then checked voicemail one last time only to receive notice of yet another set of potential names for the as-yet-nameless technology. In aggravation, he made up the name on the spot and left it as a heated suggestion in a voicemail reply. The name search succeeded and, following consultation with the Mark Twain (S. L. Clemens) estate to assure the legality of the use, the name was officially launched on February 29, 1992 (which Bier saw as "a fitting date for release of our endeavor"). To meet Wikipedias quality standards, the lead section of this article may need to be expanded. ...
February 29th, or bissextile day, is the 60th day of a leap year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 306 days remaining. ...
Bier observes that some believe the binding of the UI into the TWAIN "driver" (actually a piece of application code and not a driver at all) is a failing. He responds that it was an explicit design goal of the group to lay responsiblity for presenting the functionality of the device in the hands of the device manufacturer.
"It was our premise that no one else could know all the features of the device or how best to present that functionality to the user," Bier says. "Regardless of one's opinion about the relative goodness of that premise, it was an essential foundation of the success of the spec as measured both by adoption and adoptability."
See also :This article discusses the ancient goddess. ...
The Microsoft Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) interface is both an application programming interface (API) and a device driver interface (DDI). ...
Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE) is an application programming interface (API) that provides standardized access to any raster image scanner hardware (flatbed scanner, handheld scanner, video- and still-cameras, frame-grabbers, etc. ...
References This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL, as well as a letter from Kevin Bier directly to Wikipedia concerning the background of the name. The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC) is an online, searchable encyclopedic dictionary of computing subjects. ...
A license or licence is a document or agreement giving permission to do something. ...
GFDL redirects here. ...
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