TWAIN

For other uses, see Twain (disambiguation).
TWAIN
Original author(s) TWAIN Working Group
Developer(s) TWAIN Working Group
Initial release February 1992 (1992-02)
Stable release
2.3 / 21 November 2013 (2013-11-21)
Operating system Linux, OS X, Microsoft Windows
Platform x86, x86-64, PowerPC
Type Application programming interface
License LGPL (Data Source Manager only)
Website www.twain.org
Standard(s) TWAIN

TWAIN is an applications programming interface (API) and communications protocol that regulates communication between software and digital imaging devices, such as image scanners and digital cameras.

TWAIN is not a hardware-level protocol; it requires a driver called Data Source for each device.[1]

History

The design of TWAIN began in January 1991. The TWAIN group originally launched in 1992 by several members of the imaging industry, with the intention of standardizing communication between image handling software and hardware.[2] Review of the original TWAIN Developer’s Toolkit occurred from April, 1991 through January, 1992.[3]

The word TWAIN is not officially an acronym, but it is a backronym. The official website notes that "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. It was up-cased to TWAIN to make it more distinctive. This led people to believe it was an acronym,[4] and then to a contest to come up with an expansion. None was selected, but the entry Technology Without an Interesting Name continues to haunt the standard."[5][6] For example, the Encyclopedia of Information Technology lists "Technology Without an Interesting Name" as the official meaning of TWAIN.[7]

Release history of the TWAIN API
Version Release date Changes
1.0 February 1992
  • Initial release
1.5 May 1993
  • Performance enhancements
1.6 5 February 1996
  • Page-length detection
  • Buffer transfer
1.7 19 August 1997
  • Production scanning features
1.8 22 October 1998
  • Production scanning features omitted from v1.7 of the TWAIN specification
1.9 20 January 2000
2.0 22 February 2008
2.1 8 July 2009
  • Support for Windows 7 (32- and 64-bit)
  • Support for automatic color detection
2.2 16 February 2012
  • Implemented self-certification and new mandatory features
2.3 21 November 2013
  • Improved clarity and removed ambiguity.

Objectives

Objectives of the TWAIN Working Group and standard include:

Supported technologies

TWAIN provides support for:

TWAIN Working Group membership

Today the TWAIN standard, including the specification, data source manager and sample code, are maintained by the not-for-profit organization TWAIN Working Group.

Board and associate members of the TWAIN Working Group include:

See also

References

  1. ↑ "TWAIN". Eztwain.com. Retrieved 2013-06-14.
  2. ↑ What is the TWAIN Initiative? Archived March 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ TWAIN docs index Archived September 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ Chambers, Mark L. (2010). PCs All-in-One For Dummies (5th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. 458. ISBN 9780470908006.
  5. ↑ Pete Walsh; Francine Spiegel; Janee Aronoff (2013). Photoshop Elements 2 Most Wanted. Apress. p. 8. ISBN 9781430251194.
  6. ↑ "The TWAIN Forum • View topic - What is TWAIN an acronym for?". Twainforum.org. Retrieved 2013-06-14.
  7. ↑ Encyclopedia of Information Technology. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. 2007. p. 501. ISBN 8126907525.

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

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