What Does TWAIN Mean?
TWAIN is an application programming interface (API) and transportation protocol that helps in establishing communication between software and digital image devices such as scanners, webcams, CCTVs or digital cameras. TWAIN is sometimes mistakenly thought to be a hardware-level protocol which is not true. TWAIN requires software-level drivers for each device it is running on.
Techopedia Explains TWAIN
The TWAIN working group aims to bring standardization in image acquisition devices so that they can be linked with each other easily. TWAIN is of great significance because makes a digital image compatible with hardware devices. It offers multiplatform support for various devices and drivers, and maintains backward compatibility at the same time to ensure ease of implementation. A free developer toolkit with the software makes it easy for the hardware to customize and edit settings according to nature of the image. TWAIN holds an open-source license and offers a wide range of settings for adaptation.
Although the term is spelled in uppercase, it is not an acronym. However, the backronym “technology without an interesting name” was later created for it.
