How many .gimp* directories do you have in your /home?
There should only be ~/.gimp-1.2, for gimp-1.2 and ~/.gimp-1.3 if you have gimp-1.3 installed.

I have only ~/.gimp-1.2

Then where are you getting ~/.gimp/plug-in from?

The only plug-ins directory is /home/john/.gimp.plug-ins.

If I remove the xsane link from /home/john/.gimp/plug-ins/ the XSane option is present but does nothing. If I start gimp from a terminal, when I click the XSane option, the terminal reports:
[xsane] ERROR : eula text not found. Looks like xsane is not installed correct.

When I restore the xsane link with "ln -s /usr/local/bin/xsane ~/.gimp-1.2/plug-ins/", the xsane link is present in the ~/.gimp/plug-ins directory. Starting gimp, the XSane option is not present. Clicking the link in Konqueror starts Xsane ok.

Delete /home/john/.gimp.
You should only have /home/john/.gimp-1.2.

Hi Aussie
I'm sorry, but there was a typo in my last post - I only have ~/.gimp-1.2/plug-ins. There is no ~/.gimp/

xsane is also in /usr/lib/gimp/1.2/plug-ins

Double check the location of the xsane binary and verify that the link points to that location.

whereis xsane
xsane : /usr/local/bin/xsane

I don't know how to tell where the link points. It was put there with:
ln -s /usr/local/bin/xsane ~/.gimp-1.2/plug-ins/

bern@grendel bern$ ll .gimp-1.2/plug-ins/xsane
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bern users 20 Dec 20 14:58 .gimp-1.2/plug-ins/xsane -> /usr/local/bin/xsane

lrwxrwxrwx 1 john john 20 Dec 23 18:57 .gimp-1.2/plug-ins/xsane -> /usr/local/bin/xsane*

Now do "ls -al /usr/local/bin/xsane"

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1953905 Dec 17 20:54 /usr/local/bin/xsane*

Hi Aussie

An xsane is located in three places. If I use a terminal to execute:

/usr/local/bin/xsane is a 1.9MB executable which starts xsane normally

ll /usr/local/bin/xsane
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1953905 Dec 17 20:54 /usr/local/bin/xsane*
___________________

~/.gimp-1.2/plug-ins/xsane is a 1.9MB executable which starts xsane normally

ll ~/.gimp-1.2/plug-ins/xsane
lrwxrwxrwx 1 john john 20 Dec 23 18:57 /home/john/.gimp-1.2/plug-ins/xsane -> /usr/local/bin/xsane*
____________________

/usr/lib/gimp/1.2/plug-ins/xsane is a 505.1KB executable which causes an error message:
[xsane] ERROR : eula text not found. Looks like xsane is not installed correct.

ll /usr/lib/gimp/1.2/plug-ins/xsane
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Dec 20 14:19 /usr/lib/gimp/1.2/plug-ins/xsane -> /usr/bin/xsane-gimp*
____________________

Are these what you would expect?

No, you should only have one version of xsane installed.

Hi Aussie

I have cracked it at last.

I re-installed the xsane-0.90 tarball.

Thank you for your tireless(?) help. Seasons greetings.

Johng