RuScan

Simple SANE scanning desktop app (GTK4) with fast previews and one-click PDF export — more sanity than XSane and Skanlite.

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What it does

• Discovers SANE scanners and lets you scan pages at a selected DPI.
• Shows scanned pages in a clean list / grid view with adjustable preview size.
• Exports all scanned pages into a single PDF (JPEG-compressed, sized from the scan DPI).

Why RuScan (and why not XSane / Skanlite)

This project exists because I wanted a “day-to-day” scanning workflow (receipts, letters, forms) that is fast, predictable, and produces reasonably small PDFs without spending time tweaking settings.

In my experience with XSane and Skanlite:

• The default output can be way too large for everyday use (huge PDFs/images that are annoying to email, archive, or share).
• Getting good results can feel like an exercise in option-hunting (many knobs, inconsistent defaults, and lots of trial-and-error).
• XSane in particular can be complex and error-prone: it’s powerful, but it’s easy to end up with the wrong mode/output, or to hit workflows that don’t feel robust.

RuScan focuses on a small set of features that I personally use all the time:

• Scan pages, see them immediately, repeat.
• Export a single PDF with sane compression defaults for documents.

Install

1) System dependencies

RuScan is a GTK4 desktop app and uses SANE for scanning. You’ll need:

• GTK4 runtime + development files
• SANE runtime (libsane) and (optionally) SANE tools for debugging

Examples:

• Ubuntu/Debian:
  • sudo apt-get install -y libsane1 sane-utils libgtk-4-1 libgtk-4-dev pkg-config
• Fedora:
  • sudo dnf install -y sane-backends sane-backends-drivers sane-frontends gtk4 gtk4-devel pkgconf-pkg-config
• Arch:
  • sudo pacman -S --needed sane gtk4 pkgconf

2) Install RuScan

From crates.io:

cargo install ruscan

From Git (if you want the latest main):

cargo install --git https://github.com/iruizr7/ruscan.git --bin ruscan

Local dev install:

cargo install --path .

Usage

1. Launch ruscan.
2. Refresh and select a scanner device.
3. Choose a DPI and click Add page (Scan).
4. Repeat as needed, then click the PDF button to export.

Tips:

• Run with logs:
  • RUST_LOG=info ruscan
  • RUST_LOG=debug ruscan (more detail)
• If no scanner shows up, verify SANE sees it:
  • scanimage -L

Development

Run the app:

cargo run

Common checks:

cargo fmt
cargo clippy
cargo test

Troubleshooting

• No devices found
  • Confirm SANE works: scanimage -L
  • Check permissions (udev rules / group membership) for your scanner device.
• Wayland/X11 issues
  • Try launching from a terminal to see GTK warnings/errors.

Built with

• Relm4 (GTK4 UI framework for Rust)
• SANE (loaded dynamically via libsane.so)

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.