1Pbmtext User Manual(0) Pbmtext User Manual(0)
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6 pbmtext - render text into a PBM image
7
10 pbmtext [-font fontfile] [-builtin fontname] [-space pixels] [-lspace
11 pixels] [-nomargins] [-width pixels] [text]
12 Minimum unique abbreviation of option is acceptable. You may use dou‐
14 ble hyphens instead of single hyphen to denote options. You may use
15 white space in place of the equals sign to separate an option name from
16 its value.
17
21 This program is part of Netpbm(1).
22 pbmtext takes the specified text, either a single line from the command
24 line or multiple lines from standard input, and renders it into a PBM
25 graphical image.
26 In the image, each line of input is a line of output. Formatting char‐
28 acters such as newline have no effect on the formatting; like any
29 unprintable character, they turn into spaces.
30 The image is just wide enough for the longest line of text, plus mar‐
32 gins, and just high enough to contain the lines of text, plus margins.
33 The left and right margins are twice the width of the widest character
35 in the font; the top and bottom margins are the height of the tallest
36 character in the font. But if the text is only one line, all the mar‐
37 gins are half of this. You can use the -nomargins option to eliminate
38 the margins.
39 pbmtextps does the same thing as pbmtext, but uses Ghostscript to gen‐
41 erate the characters, which means you can use Postscript fonts. But it
42 also means you have to have Ghostscript installed and it isn't as fast.
43 Also, pbmtextps generates only one line of text, whereas pbmtext can
44 create multiple lines.
45 pbmtext is meant for small quantities of simple text. If you're work‐
47 ing with a document, you would be better off using a document format‐
48 ting program to 'print' to a Postscript file, then feeding that Post‐
49 script to pstopnm.
50
53 -font
54 -builtin
56 -builtin selects a font among those built into Netpbm.
57 -font selects a font that you supply yourself either as an X
59 Window System BDF (Bitmap Distribution Format)
60 ⟨http://xfree86.org/current/bdf.pdf⟩ file or as a PBM file in a
61 special form.
62 The default is the built in font 'bdf.'
64 'bdf' is Times-Roman 15 pixels high. (That's about 14 point
66 type printed at 75 dpi).
67 'fixed' is a built in fixed width font.
69 For information about other fonts, and how to make one of your
71 own, see Fonts ⟨#fonts⟩ below.
72 -space pixels
76 Add pixels pixels of space between characters. This is in
77 addition to whatever space surrounding characters is built into
78 the font, which is usually enough to produce a reasonable string
79 of text.
80 pixels may be fractional, in which case the number of pixels
82 added varies so as to achieve the specified average. For exam‐
83 ple -space=1.5 causes half the spaces to be 1 pixel and half to
84 be 2 pixels.
85 pixels may be negative to crowd text together, but the author
87 has not put much thought or testing into how this works in every
88 possible case, so it might cause disastrous results.
89 -lspace pixels
92 Add pixels pixels of space between lines. This is in addition
93 to whatever space above and below characters is built into the
94 font, which is usually enough to produce a reasonable line spac‐
95 ing.
96 pixels must be a whole number.
98 pixels may be negative to crowd lines together, but the author
100 has not put much thought or testing into how this works in every
101 possible case, so it might cause disastrous results.
102 -nomargins
105 By default, pbmtext adds margins all around the image as
106 described above. This option causes pbmtext not to add any mar‐
107 gins.
108 Note that there may still be space beyond the edges of the type
110 because a character itself may include space at its edges. To
111 eliminate all surrounding background, so the type touches all
112 four edges of the image, use pnmcrop.
113 -width pixels
116 This specifies how much horizontal space the text is supposed to
117 fit into.
118 If the input is one line, pbmtext breaks it into multiple lines
120 as needed to fit the specified width. It breaks it between
121 characters, but does not pay attention to white space; it may
122 break in the middle of a word and a line may begin or end with
123 white space.
124 If the input is multiple lines, pbmtext assumes you already have
126 line breaks where they make sense, and pbmtext simply truncates
127 each line as needed to fit the specified width.
128
134 Often, you want to place text over another image. One way to do this
135 is with ppmlabel. ppmlabel does not give you the font options that
136 pbmtext does, though.
137 Another way is to use pbmtext to create an image containing the text,
139 then use pamcomp to overlay the text image onto your base image. To
140 make only the text (and not the entire rectangle containing it) cover
141 the base image, you will need to give pamcomp a mask, via its -alpha
142 option. You can just use the text image itself as the mask, as long as
143 you also specify the -invert option to pamcomp.
144 If you want to overlay colored text instead of black, just use ppm‐
146 change to change all black pixels to the color of your choice before
147 overlaying the text image. But still use the original black and white
148 image for the alpha mask.
149 If you want the text at an angle, use pnmrotate on the text image (and
151 alpha mask) before overlaying.
152
155 There are three kinds of fonts you an use with pbmtext:
156 · built in
160 · BDF
162 · PBM
164 BDF Font
168 BDF is an ancient font format that at one time was standard for the X
169 Window System. Now, you don't see it very often, but you can find some
170 BDF fonts on the Xfree86
171 ⟨http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/fonts/bdf/⟩ web site.
172 You can get the full package of the BDF fonts from XFree86 (see above)
174 from the Netpbm web site ⟨http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/bdffont.tgz⟩ .
175 PBM Font
178 To create a font as a PBM file (to use with the -font option), you just
179 create a PBM image of the text matrix below.
180 The first step is to display text matrix below on the screen, e.g. in
182 an X11 window.
183 M ',/^_[`jpqy| M
186 / !'#$%&'()*+ /
188 < ,-./01234567 <
189 > 89:;<=>?@ABC >
190 @ DEFGHIJKLMNO @
191 _ PQRSTUVWXYZ[ _
192 { \]^_`abcdefg {
193 } hijklmnopqrs }
194 ~ tuvwxyz{|}~ ~
195 M ',/^_[`jpqy| M
197 Make sure it's a fixed width font -- This should display as a perfect
200 rectangle.
201 Also, try to use a simple display program. Pbmtext divides this into a
203 matrix of cells, all the same size, each containing one character, so
204 it is important that whatever you use to display it display with uni‐
205 form horizontal and vertical spacing. Fancy word processing programs
206 sometimes stretch characters in both directions to fit certain dimen‐
207 sions, and that won't work. Sometimes a display program scales a font
208 to show a character larger or smaller than its natural size. That too
209 won't often work because the rounding involved in such scaling causes
210 non-uniform distances between characters.
211 If you display the text matrix improperly, the usual symptom is that
213 when you try to use the font, pbmtext fails with an error message
214 telling you that the number of lines in the font isn't divisible by 11,
215 or it can't find the blank band around the inner rectangle. Sometimes
216 the symptom is that one of the characters displays with a piece of the
217 character that is next to it in the matrix. For example, 'l' might
218 display with a little piece of the 'm' attached on its right.
219 Do a screen grab or window dump of that text, using for instance xwd,
221 xgrabsc, or screendump. Convert the result into a pbm file. If neces‐
222 sary, use pamcut to remove anything you grabbed in addition to the text
223 pictured above (or be a wimp and use a graphical editor such as
224 ImageMagick). Finally, run it through pnmcrop. to make sure the edges
225 are right up against the text. pbmtext can figure out the sizes and
226 spacings from that.
227
231 pbmtextps(1), pamcut(1), pnmcrop(1), pamcomp(1), ppmchange(1), pnmro‐
232 tate(1), ppmlabel(1), pstopnm(1), pbm(1)
233
236 Copyright (C) 1993 by Jef Poskanzer and George Phillips
237netpbm documentation 26 April 2007 Pbmtext User Manual(0)