SUSE & openSUSE

gscan2pdf is a simple but a very efficient GUI to scan documents of multiple pages and convert them into PDFs or DjVu format. You can also import images from image files into PDF files and vice versa. gscan2pdf only takes two clicks are required to scan several pages and then save all or a selection as a PDF file, including metadata if required.

Scanning is handled with SANE via scanimage. PDF conversion is done by PDF::API2. TIFF export is handled by libtiff (faster and smaller memory footprint for multipage files).

Install gscan2pdf in openSUSE

While installation is made easy by a 1-click install from openSUSE repositories, getting it to be installed and use turned out to be a challenge. Anyway, I hope this procedure that I’m writing here simplifies it for you. gscan2pdf depends on the following Perl modules and they need to be installed before we proceed to install gscanpdf:

perl(Gtk2::Ex::PodViewer)

which also provides perl(Gtk2::Ex::PodViewer::Parser)

perl(Gtk2::Ex::Simple::List)

which also provides

perl(Gtk2::Ex::Simple::TiedCommon)
perl(Gtk2::Ex::Simple::TiedList)
perl(Gtk2::Ex::Simple::TiedRow)

Failing to install the above can result in the error

#### YaST2 conflicts list – generated 2008-08-25 11:38:56 ####

nothing provides perl(Gtk2::Ex::PodViewer) needed by gscan2pdf-0.9.15-4.5.x86_64

[ ] do not install gscan2pdf-0.9.15-4.5.x86_64

Install perl-Gtk2-Ex-PodViewer

Download the perl-Gtk2-Ex-PodViewer RPMs for you platform (x86_64, i586 etc) for SuSE 10.x from here

Once downloaded, install as follows:

opensuse11:~ # rpm -ivh perl-Gtk2-Ex-PodViewer-0.14-3.guru.suse102.x86_64.rpm

This should install the perl-Gtk2-Ex-PodViewer module on my x86_64 openSUSE 11.0. Use the appropriate platform edition for your system.

Install perl-Gtk2-Ex-Simple-List

Similarly, download the perl-Gtk2-Ex-Simple-List RPMs for you platform (x86_64, i586 etc) for SuSE 10.x from here

Once downloaded, install as follows:

opensuse11:~ # rpm -ivh perl-Gtk2-Ex-Simple-List-0.50-2.guru.suse101.x86_64.rpm

This should install the perl-Gtk2-Ex-Simple-List module on my x86_64 openSUSE 11.0. Use the appropriate platform edition for your system.

Now, launch cpan on your system and run the following commands from cpan prompt (if you are launching cpan for the 1st time, it might run you through a simple setup procedure. If you are unsure as to what to select. Choose the defaults).

cpan[1]> install Gtk2::Ex::PodViewer

Accept any prompts to complete the installation. If it prompts any module to be install copy the module name and install as above (install <modulename>).

Once done, run the following command:

cpan[1]> install Gtk2::Ex::Simple::List

Quit cpan

cpan[1]> quit

Thats it, now things get easy. Click one of the following YaST Metapackage 1-click installers based on your openSUSE version. This will download the YMP file and launch it with YaST Package Manager.

openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 10.3

openSUSE 10.2

NOTE: Click here to enable 1-click feature in openSUSE 10.2

Click Next in the window showing Repositories selection and Next on the window showing gscan2pdf package selection. Click Next on the final summary window. This should download and add the required repositories and install the required packages and any other dependencies. Click Finish when the software installation completes successfully.

Once installed, gscan2pdf is added to menu under Applications – Graphics – Scanning as “gscan2pdf”

Click on gscan2pdf to start the application. If you have any scanner already added and it should be recognised and click on scan document icon. Also, you can choose to importa images into PDFs, renumber pages etc. gscan2pdf is particularly useful if you have to scan and convert a multipage document or multiple documents into a PDF. Makes life easy!