dvisvgm
DVISVGM(1) dvisvgm Manual DVISVGM(1)
NAME
dvisvgm - converts DVI and EPS files to the XML-based SVG format
SYNOPSIS
dvisvgm [ options ] file [.dvi]
dvisvgm --eps [ options ] file [.eps]
dvisvgm --pdf [ options ] file [.pdf]
DESCRIPTION
The command-line utility dvisvgm converts DVI files, as generated by
TeX/LaTeX, to the XML-based scalable vector graphics format SVG. It
supports the classic DVI version 2 as well as version 3 (created by
pTeX in vertical mode), and the XeTeX versions 5 to 7 which are also
known as XDV. Besides the basic DVI commands, dvisvgm also evaluates
many so-called specials which heavily extend the capabilities of the
plain DVI format. For a more detailed overview, see section Supported
Specials below.
Since the current SVG standard 1.1 doesn't specify multi-page graphics,
dvisvgm creates separate SVG files for each DVI page. Because of
compatibility reasons, only the first page is converted by default. In
order to select a different page or arbitrary page sequences, use
option -p which is described below.
SVG is a vector-based graphics format and therefore dvisvgm tries to
convert the glyph outlines of all fonts referenced in a DVI page
section to scalable path descriptions. The fastest way to achieve this
is to extract the path information from vector-based font files
available in PFB, TTF, or OTF format. If dvisvgm is able to find such a
file, it extracts all necessary outline information about the glyphs
from it.
However, TeX's main source for font descriptions is Metafont, which
produces bitmap output (GF files). That's why not all obtainable TeX
fonts are available in a scalable format. In these cases, dvisvgm tries
to vectorize Metafont's output by tracing the glyph bitmaps. The
results are not as perfect as most (manually optimized) PFB or OTF
counterparts, but are nonetheless really nice in most cases.
When running dvisvgm without option --no-fonts, it creates font
elements (<font>...</font>) to embed the font data into the SVG files.
Unfortunately, only few SVG renderers support these elements yet. Most
web browsers and vector graphics applications don't evaluate them
properly so that the text components of the resulting graphics might
look strange. In order to create more compatible SVG files,
command-line option --no-fonts can be given to replace the font
elements by plain graphics paths.
OPTIONS
dvisvgm provides a POSIX-compliant command-line interface with short
and long option names. They may be given before and/or after the name
of the file to be converted. Also, the order of specifying the options
is not significant, i.e. you can add them in any order without changing
dvisvgm's behavior. Certain options accept or require additional
parameters which are directly appended to or separated by whitespace
from a short option (e.g. -v0 or -v 0). Long options require an
additional equals sign (=) between option name and argument but without
any surrounding whitespace (e.g. --verbosity=0). Multiple short options
that don't expect a further parameter can be combined after a single
dash (e.g. -ejs rather than -e -j -s).
-b, --bbox=fmt
Sets the bounding box of the generated graphic to the specified
format. The parameter fmt takes either one of the format specifiers
listed below, or a sequence of four comma- or whitespace-separated
length values x1, y1, x2 and y2. The latter define the absolute
coordinates of two diagonal corners of the bounding box. Each
length value consists of a floating point number and an optional
length unit (pt, bp, cm, mm, in, pc, dd, cc, or sp). If the unit is
omitted, TeX points (pt) are assumed.
It's also possible to give only one length value l. In this case,
the minimal bounding box is computed and enlarged by adding (-l,-l)
to the upper left and (l,l) to the lower right corner.
Additionally, dvisvgm also supports the following format
specifiers:
International DIN/ISO paper sizes
An, Bn, Cn, Dn, where n is a non-negative integer, e.g. A4 or
a4 for DIN/ISO A4 format (210mm x 297mm).
North American paper sizes
invoice, executive, legal, letter, ledger
Special bounding box sizes
dvi page size stored in the
DVI file
min computes the
minimal/tightest bounding
box
none no bounding box is
assigned
papersize box sizes specified by
papersize specials present
in the DVI file
preview bounding box data computed
by the preview package (if
present in the DVI file)
Page orientation
The default page orientation for DIN/ISO and American paper
sizes is portrait, i.e. width < height. Appending -landscape
or simply -l to the format string switches to landscape mode
(width > height). For symmetry reasons you can also explicitly
add -portrait or -p to indicate the default portrait format.
Note that these suffixes are part of the size string and not
separate options. Thus, they must directly follow the size
specifier without additional blanks. Furthermore, the
orientation suffixes can't be used with dvi, min, and none.
Note
Option -b, --bbox only affects the bounding box and does
not transform the page content. Hence, if you choose a
landscape format, the page won't be rotated.
-C, --cache[=dir]
To speed up the conversion process of bitmap fonts, dvisvgm saves
intermediate conversion information in cache files. By default,
these files are stored in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/dvisvgm/ or
$HOME/.cache/dvisvgm if XDG_CACHE_HOME is not set. If you prefer a
different location, use option --cache to overwrite the default.
Furthermore, it is also possible to disable the font caching
mechanism completely with option --cache=none. If argument dir is
omitted, dvisvgm prints the path of the default cache directory
together with further information about the stored fonts.
Additionally, outdated and corrupted cache files are removed.
-j, --clipjoin
This option tells dvisvgm to compute all intersections of clipping
paths itself rather than delegating this task to the SVG renderer.
The resulting SVG files are more portable because some SVG viewers
don't support intersecting clipping paths which are defined by
clipPath elements containing a clip-path attribute.
--color
Enables colorization of messages printed during the conversion
process. The colors can be customized via environment variable
DVISVGM_COLORS. See the Environment section below for further
information.
--colornames
By default, dvisvgm exclusively uses RGB values of the form #RRGGBB
or #RGB to represent colors in the SVG file. The latter is a short
form for colors whose RGB components each consist of two identical
hex digits, e.g. #123 equals #112233. According to the SVG
standard, it's also possible to use color names (like black and
darkblue) for a limited number of predefined colors
(https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/types.html#ColorKeywords). In order to
apply these color names rather than their RGB values, call dvisvgm
with option --colornames. All colors without an SVG color name will
still be represented by RGB values.
--comments
Adds comments with further information about selected data to the
SVG file. Currently, only font elements and font CSS rules related
to native fonts are annotated.
-E, --eps
If this option is given, dvisvgm does not expect a DVI but an EPS
input file, and tries to convert it to SVG. In order to do so, a
single psfile special command is created and forwarded to the
PostScript special handler. This option is only available if
dvisvgm was built with PostScript support enabled, and requires
Ghostscript to be available. See option --libgs for further
information.
-e, --exact-bbox
This option tells dvisvgm to compute the precise bounding box of
each character. By default, the values stored in a font's TFM file
are used to determine a glyph's extent. As these values are
intended to implement optimal character placements and are not
designed to represent the exact dimensions, they don't necessarily
correspond with the bounds of the visual glyphs. Thus, width and/or
height of some glyphs may be larger (or smaller) than the
respective TFM values. As a result, this can lead to clipped
characters at the bounds of the SVG graphics. With option
--exact-bbox given, dvisvgm analyzes the actual shape of each
character and derives a usually tight bounding box.
-f, --font-format=format
Selects the file format used to embed the font data into the SVG
files. Following formats are supported: SVG (that's the default),
TTF (TrueType), WOFF, and WOFF2 (Web Open Font Format version 1 and
2). By default, dvisvgm creates unhinted fonts that might look bad
on low-resolution devices. In order to improve the display quality,
the generated TrueType, WOFF, or WOFF2 fonts can be autohinted. The
autohinter is enabled by appending ,autohint or ,ah to the font
format, e.g. --font-format=woff,autohint or --font-format=woff,ah.
Option --font-format is only available if dvisvgm was built with
WOFF support enabled.
-m, --fontmap=filenames
Loads and evaluates a single font map file or a sequence of font
map files. These files are required to resolve font file names and
encodings. dvisvgm does not provide its own map files but tries to
read available ones coming with dvips or dvipdfm. If option
--fontmap is omitted, dvisvgm looks for the default map files
ps2pk.map, pdftex.map, dvipdfm.map, and psfonts.map (in this
order). Otherwise, the files given as option arguments are
evaluated in the given order. Multiple filenames must be separated
by commas without leading and/or trailing whitespace.
By default, redefined mappings do not replace previous ones.
However, each filename can be preceded by an optional mode
specifier (+, -, or =) to change this behavior:
+mapfile
Only those entries in the given map file that don't redefine a
font mapping are applied, i.e. fonts already mapped keep
untouched. That's also the default mode if no mode specifier is
given.
-mapfile
Ensures that none of the font mappings defined in the given map
file are used, i.e. previously defined mappings for the
specified fonts are removed.
=mapfile
All mappings defined in the map file are applied. Previously
defined settings for the same fonts are replaced.
If the first filename in the filename sequence is preceded by a
mode specifier, dvisvgm loads the default font map (see above)
and applies the other map files afterwards. Otherwise, none of
default map files will be loaded automatically.
Examples: --fontmap=myfile1.map,+myfile2.map loads myfile1.map
followed by myfile2.map where all redefinitions of myfile2.map
are ignored. --fontmap==myfile1.map,-myfile2.map loads the
default map file followed by myfile1.map and myfile2.map where
all redefinitions of myfile1.map replace previous entries.
Afterwards, all definitions for the fonts given in myfile2.map
are removed from the font map tree.
For further information about the map file formats and the mode
specifiers, see the manuals of dvips
(https://tug.org/texinfohtml/dvips.html) and dvipdfm
(https://ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/dvipdfm).
--grad-overlap
Tells dvisvgm to create overlapping grid segments when
approximating color gradient fills (also see option --grad-segments
below). By default, adjacent segments don't overlap but only touch
each other like separate tiles. However, this alignment can lead to
visible gaps between the segments because the background color
usually influences the color at the boundary of the segments if the
SVG renderer uses anti-aliasing to create smooth contours. One way
to avoid this and to create seamlessly touching color regions is to
enlarge the segments so that they extent into the area of their
right and bottom neighbors. Since the latter are drawn on top of
the overlapping parts, the visible size of all segments keeps
unchanged. Just the former gaps disappear as the background is now
completely covered by the correct colors. Currently, dvisvgm
computes the overlapping segments separately for each patch of the
mesh (a patch mesh may consist of multiple patches of the same
type). Therefore, there still might be visible gaps at the seam of
two adjacent patches.
--grad-segments=number
Determines the maximal number of segments per column and row used
to approximate gradient color fills. Since SVG 1.1 only supports a
small subset of the shading algorithms available in PostScript,
dvisvgm approximates some of them by subdividing the area to be
filled into smaller, monochromatic segments. Each of these segments
gets the average color of the region it covers. Thus, increasing
the number of segments leads to smaller monochromatic areas and
therefore a better approximation of the actual color gradient. As a
drawback, more segments imply bigger SVG files because every
segment is represented by a separate path element.
Currently, dvisvgm supports free- and lattice-form triangular patch
meshes as well as Coons and tensor-product patch meshes. They are
approximated by subdividing the area of each patch into a nxn grid
of smaller segments. The maximal number of segments per column and
row can be changed with option --grad-segments.
--grad-simplify=delta
If the size of the segments created to approximate gradient color
fills falls below the given delta value, dvisvgm reduces their
level of detail. For example, Bezier curves are replaced by
straight lines, and triangular segments are combined to tetragons.
For a small delta, these simplifications are usually not noticeable
but reduce the size of the generated SVG files significantly.
-h, --help[=mode]
Prints a short summary of all available command-line options. The
optional mode parameter is an integer value between 0 and 2. It
selects the display variant of the help text. Mode 0 lists all
options divided into categories with section headers. This is also
the default if dvisvgm is called without parameters. Mode 1 lists
all options ordered by the short option names, while mode 2 sorts
the lines by the long option names.
--keep
Disables the removal of temporary files as created by Metafont
(usually .gf, .tfm, and .log files) or the TrueType/WOFF module.
--libgs=path
This option is only available if the Ghostscript library is not
directly linked to dvisvgm and if PostScript support was not
completely disabled during compilation. In this case, dvisvgm tries
to load the shared GS library dynamically during runtime. By
default, it expects the library's name to be libgs.so.X (on
Unix-like systems, where X is the ABI version of the library) or
gsdll32.dll/gsdll64.dll (Windows). If dvisvgm doesn't find the
library, option --libgs can be used to specify the correct path and
filename, e.g. --libgs=/usr/local/lib/libgs.so.9 or
--libgs=\gs\gs9.25\bin\gsdll64.dll.
Alternatively, it's also possible to assign the path to environment
variable LIBGS, e.g. export LIBGS=/usr/local/lib/libgs.so.9 or set
LIBGS=\gs\gs9.25\bin\gsdll63.dll. LIBGS has less precedence than
the command-line option, i.e. dvisvgm ignores variable LIBGS if
--libgs is given.
-L, --linkmark=style
Selects the method how to mark hyperlinked areas. The style
argument can take one of the values none, box, and line, where box
is the default, i.e. a rectangle is drawn around the linked region
if option --linkmark is omitted. Style argument line just draws the
lower edge of the bounding rectangle, and none tells dvisvgm not to
add any visible objects to hyperlinks. The lines and boxes get the
current text color selected. In order to apply a different,
constant color, a colon followed by a color specifier can be
appended to the style string. A color specifier is either a
hexadecimal RGB value of the form #RRGGBB, or a dvips color name
(https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Colors#The_68_standard_colors_known_to_dvips).
Moreover, argument style can take a single color specifier to
highlight the linked region by a frameless box filled with that
color. An optional second color specifier separated by a colon
selects the frame color.
Examples: box:red or box:#ff0000 draws red boxes around the linked
areas. yellow:blue creates yellow filled rectangles with blue
frames.
-l, --list-specials
Prints a list of registered special handlers and exits. Each
handler processes a set of special statements belonging to the same
category. In most cases, the categories are identified by the
prefix of the special statements. It's usually a leading string
followed by a colon or a blank, e.g. color or ps. The listed
handler names, however, don't need to match these prefixes, e.g. if
there is no common prefix or if functionality is split into
separate handlers in order to allow to disable them separately with
option --no-specials. All special statements not covered by one of
the special handlers are silently ignored.
-M, --mag=factor
Sets the magnification factor applied in conjunction with Metafont
calls prior tracing the glyphs. The larger this value, the better
the tracing results. Nevertheless, large magnification values can
cause Metafont arithmetic errors due to number overflows. So, use
this option with care. The default setting usually produces nice
results.
--no-merge
Puts every single character in a separate text element with
corresponding x and y attributes. By default, new text or tspan
elements are only created if a string starts at a location that
differs from the regular position defined by the characters'
advance values.
--no-mktexmf
Suppresses the generation of missing font files. If dvisvgm can't
find a font file through the kpathsea lookup mechanism, it calls
the external tools mktextfm or mktexmf. This option disables these
calls.
-n, --no-fonts[=variant]
If this option is given, dvisvgm doesn't create SVG font elements
but uses paths instead. The resulting SVG files tend to be larger
but are concurrently more compatible with most applications that
don't support SVG fonts. The optional argument variant selects the
method how to substitute fonts by paths. Variant 0 creates path and
use elements in order to avoid lengthy duplicates. Variant 1
creates path elements only. Option --no-fonts implies --no-styles.
-c, --scale=sx[,sy]
Scales the page content horizontally by sx and vertically by sy.
This option is equivalent to -TSsx,sy.
-S, --no-specials[=names]
Disable processing of special commands embedded in the DVI file. If
no further parameter is given, all specials are ignored. To disable
a selected set of specials, an optional comma-separated list of
names can be appended to this option. A name is the unique
identifier referencing the intended special handler as listed by
option --list-specials.
--no-styles
By default, dvisvgm creates CSS styles and class attributes to
reference fonts. This variant is more compact than adding the
complete font information to each text element over and over again.
However, if you prefer direct font references, the default behavior
can be disabled with option --no-styles.
-O, --optimize[=modules]
Applies several optimizations on the generated SVG tree to reduce
the file size. The optimizations are performed by running separate
optimizer modules specified by optional argument modules. It may
consist of a single module name or a comma-separated list of
several module names. The corresponding modules are executed one by
one in the given order and thus transform the XML tree gradually.
The following list describes the currently available optimizer
modules.
list
Lists all available optimizer modules and exits.
none
If this argument is given, dvisvgm doesn't apply any
optimization. none can't be combined with other module names.
all
Performs all optimizations listed below. This is also the
default if option --optimize is used without argument. The
modules are executed in a predefined order that usually leads
to the best results. all can't be combined with other module
names.
collapse-groups
Combines nested group elements (<g>...</g>) that contain only a
single group each. If possible, the group attributes are moved
to the outermost element of the processed subtree. This module
also unwraps group elements that have no attributes at all.
group-attributes
Creates groups (<g>...</g>) for common attributes around
adjacent elements. Each attribute is moved to a separate group
so that multiple common attributes lead to nested groups. They
can be combined by applying optimizer module collapse-groups
afterwards. The algorithm only takes inheritable properties,
such as fill or stroke-width, into account and only removes
them from an element if none of the other attributes, like id,
prevents this.
remove-clippath
Removes all redundant clipPath elements. This optimization was
already present in former versions of dvisvgm and was always
applied by default. This behavior is retained, i.e. dvisvgm
executes this module even if option --optimize is not given.
You can use argument none to prevent that.
simplify-text
If a text element only contains whitespace nodes and tspan
elements, all common inheritable attributes of the latter are
moved to the enclosing text element. All tspan elements without
further attributes are unwrapped.
simplify-transform
Tries to shorten all transform attributes. This module combines
the transformation commands of each attribute and decomposes
the resulting transformation matrix into a sequence of basic
transformations, i.e. translation, scaling, rotation, and
skewing. If this sequence is shorter than the equivalent matrix
expression, it's assigned to the attribute. Otherwise, the
matrix expression is used.
-o, --output=pattern
Sets the pattern specifying the names of the generated SVG files.
Parameter pattern is a string that may contain static character
sequences as well as the variables %f, %p, %P, %hd, %ho, and %hc.
%f expands to the base name of the DVI file, i.e. the filename
without suffix, %p is the current page number, and %P the total
number of pages in the DVI file. An optional number (0-9) given
directly after the percent sign specifies the minimal number of
digits to be written. If a particular value consists of less
digits, the number is padded with leading zeros. Example: %3p
enforces 3 digits for the current page number (001, 002, etc.).
Without an explicit width specifier, %p gets the same number of
digits as %P.
If you need more control over the numbering, you can use arithmetic
expressions as part of a pattern. The syntax is %(expr) where expr
may contain additions, subtractions, multiplications, and integer
divisions with common precedence. The variables p and P contain the
current page number and the total number of pages, respectively.
For example, --output="%f-%(p-1)" creates filenames where the
numbering starts with 0 rather than 1.
The variables %hX contain different hash values computed from the
DVI page data and the options given on the command-line. %hd and
%hc are only set if option --page-hashes is present. Otherwise,
it's empty. For further information, see the description of option
--page-hashes below.
The default pattern is %f-%p.svg if the DVI file consists of more
than one page, and %f.svg otherwise. That means, a DVI file foo.dvi
is converted to foo.svg if foo.dvi is a single-page document.
Otherwise, multiple SVG files foo-01.svg, foo-02.svg, etc. are
produced. In Windows environments, the percent sign indicates
dereferenced environment variables, and must therefore be protected
by a second percent sign, e.g. --output=%%f-%%p.
-p, --page=ranges
This option selects the pages to be processed. Parameter ranges
consists of a comma-separated list of single page numbers and/or
page ranges. A page range is a pair of numbers separated by a
hyphen, e.g. 5-12. Thus, a page sequence might look like this:
2-4,6,9-12,15. It doesn't matter if a page is given more than once
or if page ranges overlap. dvisvgm always extracts the page numbers
in ascending order and converts them only once. In order to stay
compatible with previous versions, the default page sequence is 1.
dvisvgm therefore converts only the first page and not the whole
document if option --page is omitted. Usually, page ranges consist
of two numbers denoting the first and last page to be converted. If
the conversion should start at page 1, or if it should continue up
to the last DVI page, the first or second range number can be
omitted, respectively. Example: --page=-10 converts all pages up to
page 10, --page=10- converts all pages starting with page 10.
Please consider that the page values don't refer to the page
numbers printed on the corresponding page. Instead, the physical
page count is expected, where the first page always gets number 1.
-H, --page-hashes[=params]
If this option is given, dvisvgm computes hash values of all pages
to be processed. As long as the page contents don't change, the
hash value of that page stays the same. This property can be used
to determine whether a DVI page must be converted again or can be
skipped in consecutive runs of dvisvgm. This is done by propagating
the hash value to variable %hd which can be accessed in the output
pattern (see option --output). By default, dvisvgm changes the
output pattern to %f-%hd if option --page-hashes is given. As a
result, all SVG file names contain the hash value instead of the
page number. When calling dvisvgm again with option --page-hashes
with the same output pattern, it checks the existence of the SVG
file to be created and skips the conversion if it's already
present. This also applies for consecutive calls of dvisvgm with
different command-line parameters. If you want to force another
conversion of a DVI file that hasn't changed, you must remove the
corresponding SVG files beforehand or add the parameter replace
(see below). If you manually set the output pattern to not contain
a hash value, the conversion won't be skipped.
Alternatively, the output pattern may contain the variables %ho and
%hc. %ho expands to a 32-bit hash representing the given
command-line options that affect the generated SVG output, like
--no-fonts and --precision. Different combinations of options and
parameters lead to different hashes. Thus pattern %f-%hd-%ho
creates filenames that change depending on the DVI data and the
given command-line options. Variable %hc provides a combined hash
computed from the DVI data and the command-line options. It has the
same length as %hd.
Since the page number isn't part of the file name by default,
different DVI pages with identical contents get the same file name.
Therefore, only the first one is converted while the others are
skipped. To create separate files for each page, you can add the
page number to the output pattern, e.g. --output="%f-%p-%hc".
By default, dvisvgm uses the fast XXH64 hash algorithm to compute
the values provided through %hd and %hc. 64-bit hashes should be
sufficient for most documents with an average size of pages.
Alternatively, XXH32 and MD5 can be used as well. The desired
algorithm is specified by argument params of option --page-hashes.
It takes one of the strings MD5, XXH32, and XXH64, where the names
can be given in lower case too, like --page-hashes=md5. Since
version 0.7.1, xxHash provides an experimental 128-bit hash
function, whose algorithm may still change with the next versions
of the library. If the corresponding API is available, dvisvgm
supports the new hash function and option --page-hashes
additionally accepts the algorithm specifier XXH128.
Finally, option --page-hashes can take a second argument that must
be separated by a comma. Currently, only the two parameters list
and replace are evaluated, e.g. --page-hashes=md5,list or
--page-hashes=replace. When list is present, dvisvgm doesn't
perform any conversion but just lists the hash values %hd and %hc
of the pages specified by option --page. Parameter replace forces
dvisvgm to convert a DVI page even if a file with the target name
already exists.
-P, --pdf
If this option is given, dvisvgm does not expect a DVI but a PDF
input file, and tries to convert it to SVG. Similar to the
conversion of DVI files, only the first page is processed by
default. Option --page can be used to select different pages, page
ranges, and/or page sequences. The conversion is realized by
creating a single pdffile special command which is forwarded to the
PostScript special handler. Therefore, this option is only
available if dvisvgm was built with PostScript support enabled, and
requires Ghostscript to be accessible. See option --libgs for
further information.
-d, --precision=digits
Specifies the maximal number of decimal places applied to
floating-point attribute values. All attribute values written to
the generated SVG file(s) are rounded accordingly. The parameter
digits accepts integer values from 0 to 6, where 0 enables the
automatic selection of significant decimal places. This is also the
default value if dvisvgm is called without option --precision.
--progress[=delay]
Enables a simple progress indicator shown when time-consuming
operations like PostScript specials are processed. The indicator
doesn't appear before the given delay (in seconds) has elapsed. The
default delay value is 0.5 seconds.
-r, --rotate=angle
Rotates the page content clockwise by angle degrees around the page
center. This option is equivalent to -TRangle.
-R, --relative
SVG allows to define graphics paths by a sequence of absolute
and/or relative path commands, i.e. each command expects either
absolute coordinates or coordinates relative to the current drawing
position. By default, dvisvgm creates paths made up of absolute
commands. If option --relative is given, relative commands are
created instead. This slightly reduces the size of the SVG files in
most cases.
--stdin
Tells dvisvgm to read the DVI or EPS input data from stdin instead
from a file. Alternatively to option --stdin, a single dash (-) can
be given. The default name of the generated SVG file is stdin.svg
which can be changed with option --output.
-s, --stdout
Don't write the SVG output to a file but redirect it to stdout.
--tmpdir[=path]
In some cases, dvisvgm needs to create temporary files to work
properly. These files go to the system's temporary folder by
default, e.g. /tmp on Linux systems. Option --tmpdir allows to
specify a different location if necessary for some reason. Please
note that dvisvgm does not create this folder, so you must ensure
that it actually exists before running dvisvgm.
If the optional parameter path is omitted, dvisvgm prints the
location of the system's temp folder and exits.
-a, --trace-all=[retrace]
This option forces dvisvgm to vectorize not only the glyphs
actually required to render the SVG file correctly - which is the
default -, but processes all glyphs of all fonts referenced in the
DVI file. Because dvisvgm stores the tracing results in a font
cache, all following conversions of these fonts will speed up
significantly. The boolean option retrace determines how to handle
glyphs already stored in the cache. By default, these glyphs are
skipped. Setting argument retrace to yes or true forces dvisvgm to
retrace the corresponding bitmaps again.
Note
This option only takes effect if font caching is active.
Therefore, --trace-all cannot be combined with option
--cache=none.
-T, --transform=commands
Applies a sequence of transformations to the SVG content. Each
transformation is described by a command beginning with a capital
letter followed by a list of comma-separated parameters. Following
transformation commands are supported:
T tx[,ty]
Translates (moves/shifts) the page in direction of vector
(tx,ty). If ty is omitted, ty=0 is assumed. The expected unit
length of tx and ty are TeX points (1pt = 1/72.27in). However,
there are several constants defined to simplify the unit
conversion (see below).
S sx[,sy]
Scales the page horizontally by sx and vertically by sy. If sy
is omitted, sy=sx is assumed.
R angle[,x,y]
Rotates the page clockwise by angle degrees around point (x,y).
If the optional arguments x and y are omitted, the page will be
rotated around its center depending on the chosen page format.
When option -bnone is given, the rotation center is origin
(0,0).
KX angle
Skews the page along the x-axis by angle degrees. Argument
angle can take any value except 90+180k, where k is an integer.
KY angle
Skews the page along the y-axis by angle degrees. Argument
angle can take any value except 90+180k, where k is an integer.
FH [y]
Mirrors (flips) the page at the horizontal line through point
(0,y). Omitting the optional argument leads to y=h/2, where h
denotes the page height (see pre-defined constants below).
FV [x]
Mirrors (flips) the page at the vertical line through point
(x,0). Omitting the optional argument leads to x=w/2, where w
denotes the page width (see pre-defined constants below).
M m1,...,m6
Applies a transformation described by the 3x3 matrix
((m1,m2,m3),(m4,m5,m6),(0,0,1)), where the inner triples denote
the rows.
Note
All transformation commands of option -T, --transform are
applied in the order of their appearance. Multiple commands
can optionally be separated by spaces. In this case the
whole transformation string has to be enclosed in double
quotes to keep them together. All parameters are
expressions of floating point type. You can either give
plain numbers or arithmetic terms combined by the operators
+ (addition), - (subtraction), * (multiplication), /
(division) or % (modulo) with common associativity and
precedence rules. Parentheses may be used as well.
Additionally, some pre-defined constants are provided:
ux horizontal position of
upper left page corner in
TeX point units
uy vertical position of upper
left page corner in TeX
point units
h page height in TeX point
units (0 in case of
-bnone)
w page width in TeX point
units (0 in case of
-bnone)
Furthermore, you can use the 9 length constants pt, bp, cm,
mm, in, pc, dd, cc, and sp, e.g. 2cm or 1.6in. Thus,
option -TT1in,0R45 moves the page content 1 inch to the
right and rotates it by 45 degrees around the page center
afterwards.
For single transformations, there are also the short-hand
options -c, -t and -r available. In contrast to the
--transform commands, the order of these options is not
significant, so that it's not possible to describe
transformation sequences with them.
-t, --translate=tx[,ty]
Translates (moves) the page content in direction of vector (tx,ty).
This option is equivalent to -TTtx,ty.
-v, --verbosity=level
Controls the type of messages printed during a dvisvgm run:
0 no message output at all
1 error messages only
2 warning messages only
4 informational messages
only
Note
By adding these values you can combine the categories. The
default level is 7, i.e. all messages are printed.
-V, --version[=extended]
Prints the version of dvisvgm and exits. If the optional argument
is set to yes, the version numbers of the linked libraries are
printed as well.
-z, --zip[=level]
Creates a compressed SVG file with suffix .svgz. The optional
argument specifies the compression level. Valid values are in the
range of 1 to 9 (default value is 9). Larger values cause better
compression results but may take slightly more computation time.
-Z, --zoom=factor
Multiplies the values of the width and height attributes of the SVG
root element by argument factor while the coordinate system of the
graphic content is retained. As a result, most SVG viewers zoom the
graphics accordingly. If a negative zoom factor is given, the width
and height attributes are omitted.
SUPPORTED SPECIALS
dvisvgm supports several sets of special commands that can be used to
enrich DVI files with additional features, like color, graphics, and
hyperlinks. The evaluation of special commands is delegated to
dedicated handlers provided by dvisvgm. Each handler is responsible for
all special statements of the same command set, i.e. commands beginning
with the same prefix. To get a list of the actually provided special
handlers, use option --list-specials (see above). This section gives an
overview of the special commands currently supported.
bgcolor
Special statement for changing the background/page color. Since SVG
1.1 doesn't support background colors, dvisvgm inserts a rectangle
of the chosen color into the generated SVG document. This rectangle
always gets the same size as the selected or computed bounding box.
This background color command is part of the color special set but
is handled separately in order to let the user turn it off. For an
overview of the command syntax, see the documentation of dvips, for
instance.
color
Statements of this command set provide instructions to change the
text/paint color. For an overview of the exact syntax, see the
documentation of dvips, for instance.
dvisvgm
dvisvgm offers its own small set of specials. The following list
gives a brief overview.
dvisvgm:raw text
Adds an arbitrary sequence of XML nodes to the page section of
the SVG document. dvisvgm checks syntax and proper nesting of
the inserted elements but does not perform any validation, thus
the user has to ensure that the resulting SVG is still valid.
Opening and closing tags may be distributed among different raw
specials. The tags themselves can also be split but must be
continued with the immediatly following raw special. Both
syntactically incorrect and wrongly nested tags lead to error
messages. Parameter text may also contain the expressions {?x},
{?y}, {?color}, and {?matrix} that expand to the current x or y
coordinate, the current color, and current transformation
matrix, respectively. Furthermore, {?nl} expands to a newline
character.
dvisvgm:rawdef text
This command is similar to dvisvgm:raw, but puts the XML nodes
into the <defs> section of the SVG document currently being
generated.
dvisvgm:rawset name ... dvisvgm:endrawset
This pair of specials marks the begin and end of a definition
of a named raw SVG fragment. All dvisvgm:raw and dvisvgm:rawdef
specials enclosed by dvisvgm:rawset and dvisvgm:endrawset are
not evaluated immediately but stored together under the given
name for later use. Once defined, the named fragment can be
referenced throughout the DVI file by dvisvgm:rawput (see
below). The two commands dvisvgm:rawset and dvisvgm:endrawset
must not be nested, i.e. each call of dvisvgm:rawset has to be
followed by a corresponding call of dvisvgm:endrawset before
another dvisvgm:rawset may occur. Also, the identifier name
must be unique throughout the DVI file. Using dvisvgm:rawset
multiple times together with the same name leads to warning
messages.
dvisvgm:rawput name
Inserts raw SVG fragments previously stored under the given
name. dvisvgm distinguishes between fragments that were
specified with dvisvgm:raw or dvisvgm:rawdef, and handles them
differently: It inserts all dvisvgm:raw parts every time
dvisvgm:rawput is called, whereas the dvisvgm:rawdef portions
go to the <defs> section of the current SVG document only once.
dvisvgm:img width height file
Creates an image element at the current graphic position
referencing the given file. JPEG, PNG, and SVG images can be
used here. However, dvisvgm does not check the file format or
the file name suffix. The lengths width and height can be given
together with a unit specifier (see option --bbox) or as plain
floating point numbers. In the latter case, TeX point units are
assumed (1in = 72.27pt).
dvisvgm:bbox lock
Locks the bounding box of the current page and prevents it from
further updating, i.e. graphics elements added after calling
this special are not taken into account in determining the
extent of the bounding box.
dvisvgm:bbox unlock
Unlocks the previously locked bounding box of the current page
so that it gets updated again when adding graphics elements to
the page.
dvisvgm:bbox n[ew] name
Defines or resets a local bounding box called name. The name
may consist of letters and digits. While processing a DVI page,
dvisvgm continuously updates the (global) bounding box of the
current page in order to determine the minimal rectangle
containing all visible page components (characters, images,
drawing elements etc.) Additionally to the global bounding box,
the user can request an arbitrary number of named local
bounding boxes. Once defined, these boxes are updated together
with the global bounding box starting with the first character
that follows the definition. Thus, the local boxes can be used
to compute the extent of parts of the page. This is useful for
scenarios where the generated SVG file is post-processed. In
conjunction with special dvisvgm:raw, the macro {?bbox name}
expands to the four values x, y, w, and h (separated by spaces)
specifying the coordinates of the upper left corner, width, and
height of the local box name. If box name wasn't previously
defined, all four values equal to zero.
dvisvgm:bbox width height [depth] [transform]
Updates the bounding box of the current page by embedding a
virtual rectangle (x, y, width, height) where the lower left
corner is located at the current DVI drawing position (x,y). If
the optional parameter depth is specified, dvisvgm embeds a
second rectangle (x, y, width, -depth). The lengths width,
height, and depth can be given together with a unit specifier
(see option --bbox) or as plain floating point numbers. In the
latter case, TeX point units are assumed (1in = 72.27pt).
Depending on size and position of the virtual rectangle, this
command either enlarges the overall bounding box or leaves it
as is. It's not possible to reduce its extent. This special
should be used together with dvisvgm:raw in order to update the
viewport of the page properly. By default, the box extents are
assigned unchanged and, in particular, are not altered by
transformation commands. In order to apply the current
transformation matrix, the optional modifier transform can be
added at the end of the special statement.
dvisvgm:bbox a[bs] x1 y1 x2 y2 [transform]
This variant of the bbox special updates the bounding box by
embedding a virtual rectangle (x1,y1,x2,y2). The points (x1,y1)
and (x2,y2) denote the absolute coordinates of two diagonal
corners of the rectangle. As with the relative special variant
described above, the optional modifier transform allows for
applying the current transformation matrix to the bounding box.
dvisvgm:bbox f[ix] x1 y1 x2 y2 [transform]
This variant of the bbox special assigns an absolute (final)
bounding box to the resulting SVG. After executing this
command, dvisvgm doesn't further alter the bounding box
coordinates, except this special is called again later. The
points (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) denote the absolute coordinates of
two diagonal corners of the rectangle. As with the relative
special variant described above, the optional modifier
transform allows for applying the current transformation matrix
to the bounding box.
The following TeX snippet adds two raw SVG elements to the
output and updates the bounding box accordingly:
\special{dvisvgm:raw <circle cx='{?x}' cy='{?y}' r='10' stroke='black' fill='red'/>}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox 10bp 10bp 10bp transform}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox -10bp 10bp 10bp transform}
\special{dvisvgm:raw <path d='M50 200 L10 250 H100 Z' stroke='black' fill='blue'/>}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox abs 10bp 200bp 100bp 250bp transform}
em
These specials were introduced with the emTeX distribution by
Eberhard Mattes. They provide line drawing statements, instructions
for embedding MSP, PCX, and BMP image files, as well as two PCL
commands. dvisvgm supports only the line drawing statements and
ignores all other em specials silently. A description of the
command syntax can be found in the DVI driver documentation coming
with emTeX (https://ctan.org/pkg/emtex).
html
The hyperref specification defines several variants on how to mark
hyperlinked areas in a DVI file. dvisvgm supports the plain
HyperTeX special constructs as created with hyperref package option
hypertex. By default, all linked areas of the document are marked
by a rectangle. Option --linkmark allows to change this behavior.
See above for further details. Information on syntax and semantics
of the HyperTeX specials can be found in the hyperref manual
(https://ctan.org/pkg/hyperref).
papersize
The papersize special, which is an extension introduced by dvips,
can be used to specify the widths and heights of the pages in the
DVI file. It affects the page it appears on as well as all
following pages until another papersize special is found. If there
is more than one papersize special present on a page, dvisvgm
applies the last one. However, in order to stay compatible with
previous versions of dvisvgm that did not evaluate these specials,
their processing must be explicitly enabled by adding option
--bbox=papersize on the command-line. Otherwise, dvisvgm ignores
them and computes tight bounding boxes.
pdf
pdfTeX and dvipdfmx introduced several special commands related to
the generation of PDF files. Currently, only pdf:mapfile,
pdf:mapline, pdf:pagesize, and PDF hyperlink specials are supported
by dvisvgm. The latter are the PDF pendants to the HTML HyperTeX
specials generated by the hyperref package in PDF mode.
pdf:pagesize is similar to the papersize special (see above) which
specifies the size of the current and all folowing pages. In order
to actually apply the extents to the generated SVG files, option
--bbox=papersize must be given.
pdf:mapfile and pdf:mapline allow for modifying the font map tree
while processing the DVI file. They are used by CTeX, for example.
dvisvgm supports both, the dvips and dvipdfm font map format. For
further information on the command syntax and semantics, see the
documentation of \pdfmapfile in the pdfTeX user manual
(https://ctan.org/pkg/pdftex).
ps
The famous DVI driver dvips
(https://www.tug.org/texinfohtml/dvips.html) introduced its own set
of specials in order to embed PostScript code into DVI files, which
greatly improves the capabilities of DVI documents. One aim of
dvisvgm is to completely evaluate all PostScript fragments and to
convert as many of them as possible to SVG. In contrast to dvips,
dvisvgm uses floating point arithmetics to compute the precise
position of each graphic element, i.e. it doesn't round the
coordinates. Therefore, the relative locations of the graphic
elements may slightly differ from those computed by dvips.
Since PostScript is a rather complex language, dvisvgm does not
implement its own PostScript interpreter but relies on Ghostscript
(https://ghostscript.com) instead. If the Ghostscript library was
not linked to the dvisvgm binary, it is looked up and loaded
dynamically during runtime. In this case, dvisvgm looks for
libgs.so.X on Unix-like systems (supported ABI versions: 7,8,9),
for libgs.X.dylib on macOS, and for gsdll32.dll or gsdll64.dll on
Windows. You can override the default file names with environment
variable LIBGS or the command-line option --libgs. The library must
be reachable through the ld search path (*nix) or the PATH
environment variable (Windows). Alternatively, the absolute file
path can be specified. If the library cannot be found, dvisvgm
disables the processing of PostScript specials and prints a warning
message. Use option --list-specials to check whether PostScript
support is available, i.e. entry ps is present.
The PostScript handler also recognizes and evaluates bounding box
data generated by the preview package
(https://ctan.org/pkg/preview) with option tightpage. If such data
is present in the DVI file and if dvisvgm is called with option
--bbox=preview, dvisvgm sets the width and total height of the SVG
file to the values derived from the preview data. Additionally, it
prints a message showing the width, height, and depth of the box in
TeX point units to the console. Especially, the depth value can be
read by a post-processor to vertically align the SVG graphics with
the baseline of surrounding text in HTML or XSL-FO documents, for
example. Please note that SVG bounding boxes are defined by a width
and (total) height. In contrast to TeX, SVG provides no means to
differentiate between height and depth, i.e. the vertical extents
above and below the baseline, respectively. Therefore, it is
generally not possible to retrieve the depth value from the SVG
file itself.
If you call dvisvgm with option --bbox=min (the default) and
preview data is present in the DVI file, dvisvgm doesn't apply the
preview extents but computes a bounding box that tightly encloses
the page contents. The height, depth and width values written to
console are adapted accordingly.
tpic
The TPIC special set defines instructions for drawing simple
geometric objects. Some LaTeX packages, like eepic and tplot, use
these specials to describe graphics.
EXAMPLES
dvisvgm file
Converts the first page of file.dvi to file.svg.
dvisvgm -p1-5 file
Converts the first five pages of file.dvi to
file-1.svg,...,file-5.svg.
dvisvgm -p1- file
Converts all pages of file.dvi to separate SVG files.
dvisvgm -p1,3 -O file
Converts the first and third page of file.dvi to optimized SVG
files.
dvisvgm - < file.dvi
Converts the first page of file.dvi to stdin.svg where the contents
of file.dvi is read from stdin.
dvisvgm -z file
Converts the first page of file.dvi to file.svgz with default
compression level 9.
dvisvgm -p5 -z3 -ba4-l -o newfile file
Converts the fifth page of file.dvi to newfile.svgz with
compression level 3. The bounding box is set to DIN/ISO A4 in
landscape format.
dvisvgm --transform="R20,w/3,2h/5 T1cm,1cm S2,3" file
Converts the first page of file.dvi to file.svg where three
transformations are applied.
ENVIRONMENT
dvisvgm uses the kpathsea library for locating the files that it opens.
Hence, the environment variables described in the library's
documentation influence the converter.
If dvisvgm was linked without the Ghostscript library, and if
PostScript support has not been disabled, the shared Ghostscript
library is looked up during runtime via dlopen(). The environment
variable LIBGS can be used to specify path and file name of the
library.
The pre-compiled Windows versions of dvisvgm require a working
installation of MiKTeX 2.9 or above. dvisvgm does not work together
with the portable edition of MiKTeX because it relies on MiKTeX's COM
interface that is only accessible in a local installation. To enable
the evaluation of PostScript specials, the original Ghostscript DLL
gsdll32.dll must be present and reachable through the search path.
64-bit Windows builds require the 64-bit Ghostscript DLL gsdll64.dll.
Both DLLs come with the corresponding Ghostscript installers available
from https://ghostscript.com.
The environment variable DVISVGM_COLORS specifies the colors used to
highlight various parts of dvisvgm's message output. It is only
evaluated if option --color is given. The value of DVISVGM_COLORS is a
list of colon-separated entries of the form gg=BF, where gg denotes one
of the color group indicators listed below, and BF are two hexadecimal
digits specifying the background (first digit) and foreground/text
color (second digit). The color values are defined as follows: 0=black,
1=red, 2=green, 3=yellow, 4=blue, 5=magenta, 6=cyan, 7=gray, 8=bright
red, 9=bright green, A=bright yellow, B=bright blue, C=bright magenta,
D=bright cyan, E=bright gray, F=white. Depending on the terminal, the
colors may differ. Rather than changing both the text and background
color, it's also possible to change only one of them: An asterisk (*)
in place of a hexadecimal digit indicates the default text or
background color of the terminal.
All malformed entries in the list are silently ignored.
er error messages
wn warning messages
pn messages about page
numbers
ps page size messages
fw information about the
files written
sm state messages
tr messages of the glyph
tracer
pi progress indicator
Example: er=01:pi=*5 sets the colors of error messages (er) to red (1)
on black (0), and those of progress indicators (pi) to cyan (5) on
default background (*).
FILES
The location of the following files is determined by the kpathsea
library. To check the actual kpathsea configuration you can use the
kpsewhich utility.
*.enc Font encoding files
*.fgd Font glyph data files
(cache files created by
dvisvgm)
*.map Font map files
*.mf Metafont input files
*.pfb PostScript Type 1 font
files
*.pro PostScript header/prologue
files
*.tfm TeX font metric files
*.ttf TrueType font files
*.vf Virtual font files
SEE ALSO
tex(1), mf(1), mktexmf(1), grodvi(1), potrace(1), and the kpathsea
library info documentation.
RESOURCES
Project home page
https://dvisvgm.de
Code repository
https://github.com/mgieseki/dvisvgm
BUGS
Please report bugs using the bug tracker at GitHub
(https://github.com/mgieseki/dvisvgm/issues).
AUTHOR
Written by Martin Gieseking <martin.gieseking@uos.de>
COPYING
Copyright (C) 2005-2019 Martin Gieseking. Free use of this software is
granted under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version
3 or, (at your option) any later version.
dvisvgm 2.8.1 2019-11-12 DVISVGM(1)
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