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vendor: Microsoft™ (WIA-to-TWAIN bridge)

Atalasoft is not affiliated with this manufacturer.

website: Windows Image Acquisition Drivers
also: Still Image Devices (nice WIA overview)
comments: Windows includes a virtual TWAIN driver that makes all WIA devices also appear as TWAIN devices.

Microsoft seems unable to focus on imaging consistently for more than two consecutive quarters, so as usual, they support TWAIN without quite understanding it, while offering a competing proprietary standard called WIA which they promote strongly but support indifferently.

On the positive side, for many devices WIA is plug-and-play, so a device can be used with no software installation. Also, compared to TWAIN, WIA offers substantially better control of cameras and we recommend it for that.
devices: Numerous, particularly good support among digital still cameras.
issues:
  • (The WIA TWAIN driver) violates the TWAIN standard by displaying a modal dialog during the MSG_ENABLEDS triplet.
  • seems to have a time-out mechanism that can cause scanning to fail spuriously during a lamp warm-up.
  • seems not to be able to do duplex.
  • supports ICAP_CONTRAST and ICAP_BRIGHTNESS but ignores them.
In general, we do not recommend using the WIA TWAIN driver with any scanner that has a native TWAIN driver.
features: see Twister reports