Editing TWAIN (section)

==Name origin==
The word ''TWAIN'' is not officially an [[acronym]], but it is a [[backronym]]. The official website notes that "the word TWAIN is from [[Rudyard Kipling|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 computer]]s. 

It was up-cased to TWAIN to make it more distinctive. This led people to believe it was an acronym,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Chambers|first1=Mark L.|title=PCs All-in-One For Dummies|date=2010|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=9780470908006|page=458|edition=5th}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Pete Walsh|author2=Francine Spiegel|author3=Janee Aronoff|title=Photoshop Elements 2 Most Wanted|date=2013|publisher=Apress|isbn=9781430251194|page=8}}</ref><ref name=faqwhat>{{cite web|url=http://www.twainforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10113&sid=7f0b04f65e5cc370659770f3c55e173c |title=The TWAIN Forum • View topic - What is TWAIN an acronym for? |publisher=Twainforum.org |accessdate=2013-06-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160402063839/http://www.twainforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10113&sid=7f0b04f65e5cc370659770f3c55e173c|archive-date=April 2, 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> For example, the ''Encyclopedia of Information Technology'' lists "Technology Without an Interesting Name" as the official meaning of TWAIN.<ref>{{FOLDOC|TWAIN}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |publisher=Atlantic Publishers & Dist |date=2007 |title=Encyclopedia of Information Technology |isbn=978-8126907526 |page=501}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Release history of the TWAIN API<ref name="TWAIN History">{{cite web |url=https://twain.org/features/ |title=TWAIN Features |publisher=TWAIN Working Group. |accessdate=4 November 2021}}</ref>
|-
! Version
! Release date
! Changes
|-
| 1.0 || February 1992 ||
*Initial release
|-
| 1.5 || May 1993 ||
*Performance enhancements
|-
| 1.6 || 5 February 1996 || 
* Page-length detection
* Buffer transfer
|-
| 1.7 || 19 August 1997 ||
*Production scanning features
|-
| 1.8 || 22 October 1998 ||
*Production scanning features omitted from v1.7 of the TWAIN specification
*Support for [[barcode]] and [[Patch Code|patch code]] control
|-
| 1.9 || 20 January 2000 || 
*[[ICC profile]]s
*Support for the [[Cocoa (API)|Cocoa]] software development API in [[Mac OS X]]
|-
| 2.0 || 22 February 2008 || 
*[[Linux]] support
*Support for the [[Win64]] version of the [[Windows API]]
*New [[open-source software|open-source]] Data Source Manager, licensed under the [[GNU Lesser General Public License|LGPL]]
*Support for [[cheque]]-scanning
|-
| 2.1 || 8 July 2009 ||
*Support for [[Windows 7]] (32- and 64-bit)
*Support for automatic color detection
|-
| 2.2 || 16 February 2012 ||
*Implemented self-certification and new mandatory features
|-
| 2.3 || 21 November 2013 ||
*Improved clarity and removed ambiguity
|-
| 2.4 || 15 December 2015 ||
*Improved clarity and removed ambiguity
|-
|2.4.2
|19 September 2019
|
* Introduction of TWAIN Direct RESTful API
|-
|-
|2.5
|4 November 2021
|
* Added Image Addressing
|-
|}