TWAIN


TWAIN and TWAIN Direct are application programming interfaces and communication protocols that regulate communication between software and digital imaging devices, such as image scanners and digital cameras. TWAIN is supported on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
The three key elements of TWAIN are:
Both the application and the device driver must support TWAIN for the interface to be successfully used.

History

The design of TWAIN began in January 1991. The TWAIN group was originally launched in 1992 by several members of the imaging industry, with the intention of standardizing communication between image handling software and hardware. Review of the original TWAIN Developer's Toolkit occurred from April, 1991 through January, 1992.
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, 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." For example, the Encyclopedia of Information Technology lists "Technology Without an Interesting Name" as the official meaning of TWAIN.
VersionRelease dateChanges
1.0February 1992
  • Initial release
1.5May 1993
  • Performance enhancements
    • 1.65 February 1996
  • Page-length detection
  • Buffer transfer
    • 1.719 August 1997
  • Production scanning features
    • 1.822 October 1998
  • Production scanning features omitted from v1.7 of the TWAIN specification
  • Support for barcode and patch code control
    • 1.920 January 2000
  • ICC profiles
  • Support for the Cocoa software development API in Mac OS X
    • 2.022 February 2008
  • Linux support
  • Support for the Win64 version of the Windows API
  • New open-source Data Source Manager, licensed under the LGPL
  • Support for cheque-scanning
    • 2.18 July 2009
  • Support for Windows 7
  • Support for automatic color detection
    • 2.216 February 2012
  • Implemented self-certification and new mandatory features
    • 2.321 November 2013
  • Improved clarity and removed ambiguity.
    • 2.415 December 2015
  • Improved clarity and removed ambiguity

    • Objectives

    Objectives of the TWAIN Working Group and standard include:
    TWAIN provides support for:
    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: