netpbm
netpbm(1) General Commands Manual netpbm(1)
NAME
netpbm - package of graphics manipulation programs and libraries
DESCRIPTION
Netpbm is a package of graphics programs and programming libraries.
There are over 220 separate programs in the package, most of which have
"pbm", "pgm", "ppm", or "pnm" in their names. For example, pnmscale
and giftopnm.
For example, you might use pnmscale to shrink an image by 10%. Or use
pnmcomp to overlay one image on top of another. Or use pbmtext to cre-
ate an image of text. Or reduce the number of colors in an image with
pnmquant.
The Netpbm Formats
All of the programs work with a set of graphics formats called the
"netpbm" formats. Specifically, these formats are pbm(5), pgm(5),
ppm(5), and pam(5). The first three of these are sometimes known
generically as pnm. Many of the Netpbm programs convert from a Netpbm
format to another format or vice versa. This is so you can use the
Netpbm programs to work on graphics of any format. It is also common
to use a combination of Netpbm programs to convert from one non-Netpbm
format to another non-Netpbm format. Netpbm has converters for over 80
graphics formats, and as a package Netpbm lets you do more graphics
format conversions than any other computer graphics facility.
The Netpbm formats are all raster formats, i.e. they describe an image
as a matrix of rows and columns of pixels. In the PBM format, the pix-
els are black and white. In the PGM format, pixels are shades of gray.
In the PPM format, the pixels are in full color. The PAM format is
more sophisticated. A replacement for all three of the other formats,
it can represent matrices of general data including but not limited to
black and white, grayscale, and color images.
Programs designed to work with PBM images have "pbm" in their names.
Programs designed to work with PGM, PPM, and PAM images similarly have
"pgm", "ppm", and "pam" in their names.
All Netpbm programs designed to read PGM images see PBM images as if
they were PGM too. All Netpbm programs designed to read PPM images see
PGM and PBM images as if they were PPM. See the section "Implied For-
mat Conversion" below.
Programs that have "pnm" in their names read PBM, PGM, and PPM but un-
like "ppm" programs, they distinguish between them and their function
depends on the format. For example, pnmtogif creates a black and white
GIF output image if its input is PBM or PGM, but a color GIF output im-
age if its input is PPM. And pnmscale produces an output image of the
same format as the input. A ppmscale program would read all three PNM
input formats, but would see them all as PPM and would always generate
PPM output.
If it seems wasteful to you to have three separate PNM formats, be
aware that there is a historical reason for it. In the beginning,
there were only PBMs. PGMs came later, and then PPMs. Much later came
PAM, which realizes the possibility of having just one aggregate for-
mat.
The formats are described in the man pages pbm(5), pgm(5), ppm(5), and
pam(5),
Implied Format Conversion
A program that uses the PGM library to read an image can read a PBM im-
age as well as a PGM image. The program sees the PBM image as if it
were the equivalent PGM image, with a maxval of 255.
A program that uses the PPM library to read an image can read a PGM im-
age as well as a PPM image and a PBM image as well as a PGM image. The
program sees the PBM or PGM image as if it were the equivalent PPM im-
age, with a maxval of 255 in the PBM case and the same maxval as the
PGM in the PGM case.
Netpbm and Transparency
In many graphics format, there's a means of indicating that certain
parts of the image are wholly or partially transparent, meaning that if
it were displayed "over" another image, the other image would show
through there. Netpbm formats deliberately omit that capability, since
their purpose is to be extremely simple.
In Netpbm, you handle transparency via a transparency mask in a sepa-
rate (slightly redefined) PGM image. In this pseudo-PGM, what would
normally be a pixel's intensity is instead it an opaqueness value. See
pgm(5). pnmcomp is an example of a program that uses a PGM transpar-
ency mask.
The Netpbm Programs
The Netpbm programs are generally useful run by a person from a command
shell, but are also designed to be used by programs. A common charac-
teristic of Netpbm programs is that they are simple, fundamental build-
ing blocks. They are most powerful when stacked in pipelines. Netpbm
programs do not use graphical user interfaces (in fact, none of them
display graphics at all, except for a very simple Linux Svgalib dis-
player) and do not seek input from a user.
Each of these programs has its own man page.
Common Options
There are a few options that are present on all programs that are based
on the Netpbm libraries, including virtually all Netpbm programs.
These are not mentioned in the individual man pages for the programs.
-quiet Suppress all informational messages that would otherwise be is-
sued to Standard Error. (To be precise, this only works to the
extent that the program in question implements the Netpbm con-
vention of issuing all informational messages via the pm_mes-
sage() service of the Netpbm libraries).
-version
Instead of doing anything else, report the version of the libpbm
library linked with the program (it may have been linked stati-
cally into the program, or dynamically linked at run time).
Normally, the Netpbm programs and the libraries are installed at
the same time, so this tells you the version of the program and
all the other Netpbm libraries and files it uses as well.
Here is a directory of the Netpbm programs. You can also use
man -k to search for a program that does what you want.
Converters
ppmtompeg
convert series of PPM frames to an MPEG movie
jpegtopnm
convert JFIF/JPEG/EXIF file to Netpbm format
pnmtojpeg
convert PPM to JPEG/JFIF/EXIF format
anytopnm
convert any graphics format to Netpbm format
bmptoppm
convert Windows or OS/2 Bitmap file to PPM
ppmtobmp
convert PPM to Windows or OS/2 Bitmap file
winicontoppm
convert Windows icon file to PPM
ppmtowinicon
convert PPM to Windows icon file
giftopnm
convert GIF to portable anymap
ppmtogif
convert PPM to GIF
pnmtopng
convert Netpbm format to Portable Network Graphics
pngtopnm
convert PNG (Portable Network Graphics) to Netpbm formats
palmtopnm
convert Palm pixmap to Netpbm formats
pnmtopalm
convert Netpbm formats to Palm pixmap
jbigtopbm
convert JBIG BIE (compressed bitmap) to PBM
pamtopnm
convert a PAM image to PBM, PGM, or PPM
pbmtojbig
convert PBM to JBIG BIE (compressed bitmap)
pnmtofiasco
convert Netpbm image to Fiasco (wfa) highly compressed format
fiascotopnm
convert Fiasco (wfa) highly compressed format to Netpbm image
hpcdtoppm
convert photo CD to PPM
pbmtonokia
convert PBM to Nokia Smart Messaging Format (SMF)
pbmtowbmp
convert PBM to WAP (Wireless App Protocol) Wireless Bitmap
wbmptopbm
convert WAP (Wireless App Protocol) Wireless Bitmap to PBM
neotoppm
convert Atari Neochrome (.neo) image to PPM
ppmtoneo
convert PPM image to Atari Neochrome (.neo)
pbmtomda
convert from PBM to Microdesign (for Amstrad PCWs)
mdatopbm
convert from Microdesign (for Amstrad PCWs) to PBM
atktopbm
convert Andrew Toolkit raster object to PBM
pbmtoatk
convert PBM to Andrew Toolkit raster object
brushtopbm
convert Xerox doodle brushes to PBM
cmuwmtopbm
convert CMU window manager format to PBM
g3topbm
convert Group 3 FAX to PBM
pbmtog3
convert PBM to Group 3 FAX
icontopbm
convert Sun icon to PBM
pbmtoicon
convert PBM to Sun icon
gemtopnm
convert GEM .img format to PBM or pixmap
macptopbm
convert MacPaint to PBM
pbmtomacp
convert PBM to MacPaint
mgrtopbm
convert MGR format to PBM
pbmtomgr
convert PBM to MGR format
pi3topbm
convert Atari Degas .pi3 to PBM
pbmtopi3
convert PBM to Atari Degas .pi3
xbmtopbm
convert X10 or X11 bitmap to PBM
pbmtoxbm
convert PBM to X11 bitmap
pbmtox10bm
convert PBM to X10 bitmap
ybmtopbm
convert Bennet Yee "face" file into PBM
pbmtoybm
convert PBM into Bennet Yee "face" file
pbmto10x
convert PBM to Gemini 10x printer graphics
pbmtoascii
convert PBM to ASCII graphic form
asciitopgm
convert ASCII character graphics to PGM
pbmtobbnbg
convert PBM to BBN BitGraph graphics
pbmtocmuwm
convert PBM to CMU window manager format
pbmtoepson
convert PBM to Epson printer graphics
pbmtogem
convert PBM into GEM .img file
pbmtogo
convert PBM to GraphOn graphics
pbmtolj
convert PBM to HP LaserJet black and white graphics
ppmtolj
convert PPM to HP LaserJet color graphics (PCL)
pjtoppm
convert HP PaintJet file to PPM
ppmtopj
convert PPM to HP PaintJet file
thinkjettopbm
convert HP Thinkjet printer stream to PBM
pbmtoplot
convert PBM into Unix plot(5) file
pbmtoptx
convert PBM to Printronix graphics
pbmtozinc
convert PBM to Zinc Interface Library icon
fitstopnm
convert FITS format to portable anymap
pnmtofits
convert Netpbm formats to FITS format
fstopgm
convert Usenix FaceSaver(tm) format to PGM
pgmtofs
convert PGM to Usenix FaceSaver(tm) format
hipstopgm
convert HIPS format to PGM
lispmtopgm
convert a Lisp Machine bitmap file into PGM format
pgmtolispm
convert PGM into Lisp Machine format
pnmtops
convert Netpbm formats to Postscript
pstopnm
convert Postscript to Netpbm formats
psidtopgm
convert PostScript "image" data to PGM
pbmtolps
convert PBM image to Postscript using lines
pbmtoepsi
convert a PBM image to encapsulated Postscript preview bitmap
pbmtopsg3
convert PBM images to Postscript using G3 fax compression.
rawtopgm
convert raw grayscale bytes to PGM
pgmtopbm
convert PGM to PBM
gouldtoppm
convert Gould scanner file to PPM
ilbmtoppm
convert IFF ILBM to PPM
ppmtoilbm
convert PPM to IFF ILBM
imgtoppm
convert Img-whatnot to PPM
mtvtoppm
convert MTV ray-tracer output to PPM
pcxtoppm
convert PC Paintbrush format to PPM
pgmtoppm
colorize a portable graymap into a PPM
pi1toppm
convert Atari Degas .pi1 to PPM
ppmtopi1
convert PPM to Atari Degas .pi1
picttoppm
convert Macintosh PICT to PPM
ppmtopict
convert PPM to Macintosh PICT
qrttoppm
convert QRT ray-tracer output to PPM
rawtoppm
convert raw RGB bytes to PPM
sldtoppm
convert an AutoCAD slide file into a PPM
spctoppm
convert Atari compressed Spectrum to PPM
sputoppm
convert Atari uncompressed Spectrum to PPM
tgatoppm
convert TrueVision Targa file to PPM
ppmtotga
convert PPM to TrueVision Targa file
ximtoppm
convert Xim to PPM
xpmtoppm
convert XPM format to PPM
ppmtoxpm
convert PPM to XPM format
yuvtoppm
convert Abekas YUV format to PPM
eyuvtoppm
convert Encoder/Berkeley YUV format to PPM
ppmtoeyuv
convert PPM to Encoder/Berkeley YUV format
ppmtoyuv
convert PPM to Abekas YUV format
ppmtoyuvsplit
convert PPM to 3 subsampled raw YUV files
yuvsplittoppm
merge 3 subsampled raw YUV files to one PPM
ppmtoacad
convert PPM to AutoCAD database or slide
ppmtoicr
convert PPM to NCSA ICR graphics
ppmtopcx
convert PPM to PC Paintbrush format
ppmtopgm
convert PPM to portable graymap
ppmtopuzz
convert PPM to X11 "puzzle" file
rasttopnm
convert Sun raster file to Netpbm formats
pnmtorast
convert Netpbm formats to Sun raster file
tifftopnm
convert TIFF file to portable anymap
pnmtotiff
convert Netpbm formats to TIFF RGB file
pnmtotiffcmyk
convert Netpbm formats to TIFF CMYK file
xwdtopnm
convert X10 or X11 window dump to Netpbm formats
pnmtoxwd
convert Netpbm formats to X11 window dump
pnmtoplainpnm
convert regular Netpbm format image into plain Netpbm format
pbmtopgm
convert PBM file to PGM by averaging areas
411toppm
convert 411 (Sony Mavica) to PPM
ppmtosixel
convert PPM to DEC sixel format
ppmtouil
convert PPM to Motif UIL icon file
sbigtopgm
convert Santa Barbara Instrument Group CCD file to PGM
vidtoppm
convert Parallax XVideo JPEG to sequence of PPM files
pnmtorle
convert PNM to Utah Raster Toolkit (urt/rle) file
rletopnm
convert Utah Raster Toolkit (urt/rle) file to PNM
ppmtoleaf
convert PPM to Interleaf
leaftoppm
convert Interleaf to PPM
bioradtopgm
convert Biorad confocal image to PGM
pbmtoln03
convert PGM image to Dec LN03+ Sixel image
pbmtopk
convert PBM image to packed format (PK) font
pktopbm
convert packed format (PK) font to PBM image
Image Generators
All of these generate Netpbm format output.
pbmmake
create a blank PBM image of a specified size
ppmmake
create a PPM image of a specified size and color
pgmramp
generate a grayscale ramp
ppmpat create a pretty PPM image
ppmrainbow
create a spectrum-like image with colors fading together.
pgmnoise
create a PGM image of white noise
pbmtext
render text into a PBM image
pbmupc create a Universal Product Code PBM image
ppmcie generate a CIE color map PPM image
pbmpage
create a printer test pattern page in PBM format
ppmcolors
create a color map (PPM image) containing all possible colors of
given maxval
Image Editors
All of these work on the Netpbm formats
ppmlabel
Add text to an image
pnmshadow
add a shadow to an image so it looks like it's floating
ppmbrighten
brighten or dim an image -- change saturation and value
ppmdim dim an image - different way from ppmbrighten
pbmreduce
reduce a PBM N times, using Floyd-Steinberg
pgmnorm
normalize contrast in a PGM image
ppmnorm
normalize contrast in a PPM image
pbmpscale
enlarge a PBM image with edge smoothing
pnmscale
scale an image with high precision
pnmscalefixed
scale an image quickly with low precision
pnmenlarge
enlarge an image N times
ppmdither
ordered dither for color images
pnmcolormap
Choose the N best colors to represent an image; create a col-
ormap
pnmremap
Replace colors in an image with those from a color map
ppmquant
quantize colors in a color image down to fewer colors
pnmquant
quantize colors/shades in a color or grayscale image down to
fewer
ppmquantall
quantize colors on many files
ppmrelief
run a Laplacian Relief filter on a PPM
pnmarith
perform arithmetic on two images
pnmcat concatenate images
pnmpad add borders to an image
pnmcomp
create composite (overlay) of images
ppmmix mix (overlay) two images.
pnmcrop
crop all like-colored borders off an image
pamcut select a rectangular region from an image
pnmcut obsolete version of pamcut (kept because it may have fewer bugs)
pamdice
slice an image into many horizontally and/or vertically
pamdeinterlace
remove every other row from an image
pamchannel
extract a single plane (channel, e.g. R, G, or B) from an image
pnmdepth
change the maxval in an image
pnmflip
perform one or more flip operations on an image
pamstretch
scale up an image by inserting interpolated pixels
pamstretch-gen
scale by non-integer values using pamstretch and pnmscale
pnminvert
invert an image
pnmgamma
perform gamma correction on an image
pnmhisteq
histogram equalize image to increase contrast
pnmmargin
add a margin to an image
pnmpaste
paste a rectangle into an image
pnmrotate
rotate an image
pnmshear
shear an image
pnmsmooth
smooth am image
pnmtile
replicate an image into a specified size
pbmclean
remove lone pixels (snow) from a PBM image
pnmalias
antialias an image
ppmchange
change all of one color to another in PPM image
pnmnlfilt
filter an image by replacing each pixel with a function of
nearby pixels
ppmshift
shift lines of PPM image left or right a random amount
ppmspread
move pixels of PPM image a random amount
pnmconvol
general MxN convolution on an image
rgb3toppm
combine three portable graymaps into one PPM
ppmtorgb3
separate a PPM into three portable graymaps
pbmlife
apply Conway's rules of Life to a PBM image
ppmdist
map colors to high contrast grayscales arbitrarily
ppmntsc
adjust colors so they are legal for NTSC or PAL television
Image Analyzers
These all work on the Netpbm formats as input.
pnmfile
describe an image's vital characteristics
pnmpsnr
measure difference between two images
pgmedge
edge-detect a PGM image
pgmenhance
edge-enhance a PGM image
pgmslice
print grayscale values for a row or column of a PGM image
pgmtexture
calculate textural features on a PGM image
pgmhist
print a histogram of the values in a PGM image
ppmhist
print a histogram of a PPM
pnmhistmap
draw a histogram of a PGM or PPM
ppmtomap
generate a map of all colors in an image
ppm3d generate a blue/green 3D glasses image from two images
Miscellaneous
ppmsvgalib
display a PPM image on a Linux virtual console using Svgalib
pbmmask
create a mask bitmap from a regular bitmap
ppmcolormask
create mask of areas of a certain color in an image
pnmsplit
split a multi-image Netpbm file into multiple 1-image files
pnmindex
build a visual index of a bunch of Netpbm images
pcdindex
build a visual index of a photo CD from PCD overview file
pnmmontage
build multiple Netpbm images into a single montage image
pgmbentley
Bentleyize a PGM image
pgmcrater
create cratered terrain by fractal forgery
pamoil turn a PNM or PAM image into an oil painting
ppmforge
fractal forgeries of clouds, planets, and starry skies
pgmkernel
generate a convolution kernel
ppmtv Make an image lined so it looks like an old TV
pbmto4425
Display PBM image on AT&T 4425 ASCII terminal with gfx chars
Uncatalogued As Yet
pnmtoddif
pnmtosgi
pnmtosir
ppmflash
ppmqvga
ppmtomitsu
ppmtopjxl
sgitopnm
sirtopnm
spottopgm
xvminitoppm
zeisstopnm
The Netpbm Libraries
The Netpbm programming libraries, libpbm(3), libpgm(3), libppm(3), and
libpnm(3), make it easy to write programs that manipulate graphic im-
ages. Their main function is to read and write files in the Netpbm
format, and because the Netpbm package contains converters for all the
popular graphics formats, if your program reads and writes the Netpbm
formats, you can use it with any formats.
But the libraries also contain some utility functions, such as charac-
ter drawing and RGB/YCrCb conversion.
The libraries have the conventional C linkage. Virtually all programs
in the Netpbm package are based on the Netpbm libraries.
Application Notes
As a collection of primitive tools, the power of Netpbm is multiplied
by the power of all the other unix tools you can use with them. These
notes remind you of some of the more useful ways to do this. Often,
when people want to add high level functions to the Netpbm tools, they
have overlooked some existing tool that, in combination with Netpbm,
already does it.
Often, you need to apply some conversion or edit to a whole bunch of
files.
As a rule, Netpbm programs take one input file and produce one output
file, usually on Standard Output. This is for flexibility, since you
so often have to pipeline many tools together.
Here is an example of a shell command to convert all your of PNG files
(named *.png) to JPEG files named *.jpg:
for i in *.png; do pngtopnm $i | ppmtojpeg >`basename $i .png`.jpg;
done
Or you might just generate a stream of individual shell commands, one
per file, with awk or perl. Here's how to brighten 30 YUV images that
make up one second of a movie, keeping the images in the same files:
ls *.yuv .br | perl -ne 'chomp;
print yuvtoppm $_ | ppmbrighten -v 100 | ppmtoyuv >tmp$$.yuv; ,
mv tmp$$.yuv $_0
' .br | sh
The tools find (with the -exec option) and xargs are also useful for
simple manipulation of groups of files.
Some shells' "process substitution" facility can help where a non-
Netpbm program expects you to identify a disk file for input and you
want it to use the result of a Netpbm manipulation. Say printcmyk
takes the filename of a Tiff CMYK file as input and what you have is a
PNG file abc.png. Try:
printcmyk <({ pngtopnm abc.png | pnmtotiffcmyk ; })
It works in the other direction too, if you have a program that makes
you name its output file and you want the output to go through a Netpbm
tool.
Other Graphics Software
Netpbm contains primitive building blocks. It certainly is not a com-
plete graphics library.
The first thing you will need to make use of any of these tools is a
viewer. For the X inclined, there is xzgv. See ftp://meta-
lab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/viewers/X.
xloadimage and its extension xli are also common ways to display a
graphic image in X.
ImageMagick is like a visual version of Netpbm. Using the X/Window
system on Unix, you can do basic editing of images and lots of format
conversions. The package does include at least some non-visual tools.
Convert, Mogrify, Montage, and Animate are popular programs from the
ImageMagick package. ImageMagick runs on Unix, Windows, Windows NT,
Macintosh, and VMS.
The Gimp is a visual image editor for Unix and X, in the same category
as the more famous, less capable, and much more expensive Adobe Photo-
shop, etc. for Windows. See http://www.gimp.org.
The file program looks at a file and tells you what kind of file it is.
It recognizes most of the graphics formats with which Netpbm deals, so
it is pretty handy for graphics work. Netpbm's anytopnm program de-
pends on file. See ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file.
The Utah Raster Toolkit serves a lot of the same purpose as Netpbm, but
without the emphasis on format conversions. This package is based on
the RLE format, which you can convert to and from the Netpbm formats.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/research/projects/alpha1/urt.html gives some in-
formation on the Utah Raster Toolkit, but does not tell where to get
it.
There are some Netpbm-like graphics tools distributed by the Army High
Performance Computing Research Center at http://www.arc.umn.edu/gvl-
software/media-tools.html. These operate directly on non-Netpbm format
images, so they aren't included in the Netpbm package. However, you
can use them with any image format by using the Netpbm format convert-
ers.
Ivtools is a suite of free X Windows drawing editors for Postscript,
Tex, and web graphics production, as well as an embeddable and extend-
able vector graphic shell. It uses the Netpbm facilities. See
http://www.ivtools.org.
Ilib is a C subroutine library with functions for adding text to an im-
age (as you might do at a higher level with pbmtext, pnmcomp, etc.).
It works with Netpbm input and output. Find it at
http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib. Netpbm also includes character
drawing functions in the libppm library, but they do not have as fancy
font capabilities (see ppmlabel for an example of use of the Netpbm
character drawing functions).
GD is a library of graphics routines that is part of PHP. It has a
subset of Netpbm's functions and has been found to resize images more
slowly and with less quality.
pnm2ppa converts to HP's "Winprinter" format (for HP 710, 720, 820,
1000, etc). It is a superset of Netpbm's pbmtoppa and handles, no-
tably, color. However, it is more of a printer driver than a Netpbm-
style primitive graphics building block. See http://source-
forge.net/project/?group_id=1322.
The program morph morphs one image into another. It uses Targa format
images, but you can use tgatoppm and ppmtotga to deal with that format.
You have to use the graphical (X/Tk) Xmorph to create the mesh files
that you must feed to morph. morph is part of the Xmorph package. See
http://www.colorado-research.com/~gourlay/software/Graphics/Xmorph.
To create an animated GIF, or extract a frame from one, use gifsicle.
gifsicle converts between animated GIF and still GIF, and you can use
ppmtogif and giftopnm to connect up to all the Netpbm utilities. See
http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle.
To convert an image of text to text (optical character recongition -
OCR), use gocr (think of it as an inverse of pbmtext). See http://alt-
mark.nat.uni-magdeburg.de/~jschulen/ocr/.
http://schaik.com/pngsuite contains a PNG test suite -- a whole bunch
of PNG images exploiting the various features of the PNG format.
Another version of pnmtopng/pngtopnm is at
http://www.schaik.com/png/pnmtopng.html. The version in Netpbm was ac-
tually based on that package a long time ago, and you can expect to
find better exploitation of the PNG format, especially recent enhance-
ments, in that package. It may be a little less consistent with the
Netpbm project and less exploitive of recent Netpbm format enhance-
ments, though.
jpegtran Does some of the same transformations as Netpbm is famous for,
but does them specifically on JPEG files and does them without loss of
information. By contrast, if you were to use Netpbm, you would first
decompress the JPEG image to Netpbm format, then transform the image,
then compress it back to JPEG format. In that recompression, you lose
a little image information because JPEG is a lossy compression. jpeg-
tran comes with the Independent Jpeg Group's (http://www.ijg.org) JPEG
library.
Some tools to deal with EXIF files (see also Netpbm's jpegtopnm and pn-
mtojpeg): To dump (interpret) an EXIF header: Exifdump
((http://topo.math.u-psud.fr/~bousch/exifdump.py) or Jhead
(http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead).
A Python EXIF library and dumper: http://pyexif.sourceforge.net.
Latex2html converts Latex document source to HTML document source.
Part of that involves graphics, and Latex2html uses Netpbm tools for
some of that. But Latex2html through its history has had some rather
esoteric codependencies with Netpbm. Older Latex2html doesn't work
with current Netpbm. Latex2html-99.2beta8 works, though.
Other Graphics Formats
People never seem to tire of inventing new graphics formats, often com-
pletely redundant with pre-existing ones. Netpbm cannot keep up with
them. Here is a list of a few that we know Netpbm does not handle
(yet).
CAL (originated by US Department Of Defense, favored by architects).
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/graphics/fileformats-faq/part3/sec-
tion-24.html
array formats dx, general, netcdf, CDF, hdf, cm
CGM+
Windows Meta File (.WMF). Libwmf converts from WMF to things like
Latex, PDF, PNG. Some of these can be input to Netpbm.
Microsoft Word, RTF. Microsoft keeps a proprietary hold on these
formats. Any software you see that can handle them is likely to cost
money.
DXF (AutoCAD)
HISTORY
Netpbm has a long history, starting with Jef Poskanzer's Pbmplus pack-
age in 1988. The file HISTORY in the Netpbm source code contains a
historical overview as well as a detailed history release by release.
AUTHOR
Netpbm is based on the Pbmplus package by Jef Poskanzer, first distrib-
uted in 1988 and maintained by him until 1991. But the package con-
tains work by countless other authors, added since Jef's original work.
In fact, the name is derived from the fact that the work was contrib-
uted by people all over the world via the Internet, when such collabo-
ration was still novel enough to merit naming the package after it.
Bryan Henderson has been maintaining Netpbm since 1999. In addition to
packaging work by others, Bryan has also written a significant amount
of new material for the package.
netpbm(1)
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