Image Acquisition

In Q2Pix image acquisition capabilities have been improved and extended as described below.

Acquisition Protocols

The following acquisition protocols are supported:

The vast majority of scanners, digital cameras, and video cameras uses these protocols and can therefore be supported in Q2Pix.

Acquisition Environment

Image acquisition sessions run in OS (not 4D) processes with the help of external tools bundled with Q2Pix. This mechanism offers two big advantages:

  • If a device driver for some reason misbehaves or even crashes, 4D will not be affected.
  • It is possible to run acquisition sessions in mixed processor architectures. For example, it is possible to use a 32-bit device driver from 4D 64-bit and vice versa, which would not be possible when running the session directly in 4D. This is particularly important because it renders Q2Pix independent of device manufacturers who are slow in releasing 64-bit drivers.

TWAIN Data Source Manager

The TWAIN Data Source Manager (TWAINDSM) is the intermediary between applications and device drivers.

While the 32-bit version of the TWAIN DSM was installed by default on all versions of Windows, the 64-bit version is not.

Q2Pix bundles the latest 32- and 64-bit versions of the TWAIN DSM for Windows in the plug-in package so that end-users need not install anything other than the drivers for their devices.

The TWAIN DSM is now an open-source project hosted at <https://github.com/twain/twain-dsm>.

Acquisition API

Q2Pix offers a very simple but modern Application Programming Interface.

4D objects and JSON are used for describing acquisition sources, for specifying acquisition session options, and for retrieving the acquisition results.

See the Image Acquisition methods in the API reference for descriptions of the available methods, and the Acquiring Images section of the Programming Guide for code examples.