Using duplex scan of HP OfficeJet Pro 8710

Question

I'm having trouble understanding the process of getting the scanner of my HP OfficeJet Pro 8710 running completely on Ubuntu 17.04. Here is what I have done:

I checked the hplip page for the printer. It says that Scan is supported. I installed hplip and am able to print.

Reading this question, I also ran the check-procedure. It yielded no error message.

I then read that xsane or simple-scan are tools to do the job. Both work. Both xsane and simple-page can scan the sheet that is lying face down on the glass surface of my scanner. My question is this:

How can I make the scanning of many double-sided sheets of paper available via the duplex-scan?

(Forgive my English: With duplex-scan I mean the area that sucks in many sheets of paper in a row and is able to scan both sides without having to turn the pages and scan sheets one at a time. The German word would be ›Dokumenteneinzug‹.)

My knowledge of configuring hardware drivers is very limited, so I would be grateful for any information to help me to understand the process.

Answer 1

Under xsane

• tell it how many pages to scan
• multipage (will open a "project")
• source: Duplex (so that the pages get scanned on BOTH sides)

After done with scanning, save the "project" as pdf or have a look at the scans of the single pages in the project folder.

Answer 2

According to HP:

How do I scan using the ADF in duplex mode?
This feature is not currently supported.

So other answer hasn’t actually been tested.

I just tested it now. And while you can set it to duplex in xsane and scanimage, and at least in my case, it does pull in the paper again, but did so only partially, before expelling it again, and did not scan the other side, nor did xsane or scanimage receive or create a second page.

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Extended answer (if you really want a solution anyway)

Since companies like HP both don’t support the Linux desktop market much “because it is small” and keep it small in the first place by not supporting it, the only way forward here, would be to

1. use a protocol sniffer on the Windows driver’s communication with the device,
2. compare a scan with and without duplex,
3. extract the differences, and
4. alter the code of the Linux driver to send those differences to the device too.

If it’s worth it to you, and you can’t do it yourself, you could pay a qualified programmer with a bit of low-level programming experience to do it. Beware though, as it will take several days, even for a skilled person, at a rate of several hundred dollars a day.