Pbmtext User Manual(0)					Pbmtext User Manual(0)



NAME
       pbmtext - render text into a PBM image


SYNOPSIS
       pbmtext	[-font	fontfile] [-builtin fontname] [-space pixels] [-lspace
       pixels] [-nomargins] [-width pixels] [text]

       Minimum unique abbreviation of option is acceptable.  You may use  dou-
       ble  hyphens  instead  of single hyphen to denote options.  You may use
       white space in place of the equals sign to separate an option name from
       its value.



DESCRIPTION
       This program is part of Netpbm(1).

       pbmtext takes the specified text, either a single line from the command
       line or multiple lines from standard input, and renders it into	a  PBM
       graphical image.

       In the image, each line of input is a line of output.  Formatting char-
       acters such as newline have no  effect  on  the	formatting;  like  any
       unprintable character, they turn into spaces.

       The  image  is just wide enough for the longest line of text, plus mar-
       gins, and just high enough to contain the lines of text, plus margins.

       The left and right margins are twice the width of the widest  character
       in  the	font; the top and bottom margins are the height of the tallest
       character in the font.  But if the text is only one line, all the  mar-
       gins  are half of this.	You can use the -nomargins option to eliminate
       the margins.

       pbmtextps does the same thing as pbmtext, but uses Ghostscript to  gen-
       erate the characters, which means you can use Postscript fonts.	But it
       also means you have to have Ghostscript installed and it isn't as fast.
       Also,  pbmtextps	 generates  only one line of text, whereas pbmtext can
       create multiple lines.

       pbmtext is meant for small quantities of simple text.  If you're	 work-
       ing  with  a document, you would be better off using a document format-
       ting program to 'print' to a Postscript file, then feeding  that	 Post-
       script to pstopnm.


OPTIONS
       -font

       -builtin
	      -builtin selects a font among those built into Netpbm.

	      -font  selects  a	 font  that you supply yourself either as an X
	      Window	System	  BDF	  (Bitmap     Distribution     Format)
	      <http://xfree86.org/current/bdf.pdf>  file or as a PBM file in a
	      special form.

	      The default is the built in font 'bdf.'

	      'bdf' is Times-Roman 15 pixels high.   (That's  about  14	 point
	      type printed at 75 dpi).

	      'fixed' is a built in fixed width font.

	      For  information	about other fonts, and how to make one of your
	      own, see Fonts <#fonts>  below.



       -space pixels
	       Add pixels pixels of space  between  characters.	  This	is  in
	      addition	to whatever space surrounding characters is built into
	      the font, which is usually enough to produce a reasonable string
	      of text.

	      pixels  may  be  fractional,  in which case the number of pixels
	      added varies so as to achieve the specified average.  For	 exam-
	      ple  -space=1.5 causes half the spaces to be 1 pixel and half to
	      be 2 pixels.

	      pixels may be negative to crowd text together,  but  the	author
	      has not put much thought or testing into how this works in every
	      possible case, so it might cause disastrous results.


       -lspace pixels
	       Add pixels pixels of space between lines.  This is in  addition
	      to  whatever  space above and below characters is built into the
	      font, which is usually enough to produce a reasonable line spac-
	      ing.

	      pixels must be a whole number.

	      pixels  may  be negative to crowd lines together, but the author
	      has not put much thought or testing into how this works in every
	      possible case, so it might cause disastrous results.


       -nomargins
	      By  default,  pbmtext  adds  margins  all	 around	 the  image as
	      described above.	This option causes pbmtext not to add any mar-
	      gins.

	      Note  that there may still be space beyond the edges of the type
	      because a character itself may include space at its  edges.   To
	      eliminate	 all  surrounding  background, so the type touches all
	      four edges of the image, use pnmcrop.


       -width pixels
	      This specifies how much horizontal space the text is supposed to
	      fit into.

	      If  the input is one line, pbmtext breaks it into multiple lines
	      as needed to fit the specified  width.   It  breaks  it  between
	      characters,  but	does  not pay attention to white space; it may
	      break in the middle of a word and a line may begin or  end  with
	      white space.

	      If the input is multiple lines, pbmtext assumes you already have
	      line breaks where they make sense, and pbmtext simply  truncates
	      each line as needed to fit the specified width.





USAGE
       Often,  you  want to place text over another image.  One way to do this
       is with ppmlabel.  ppmlabel does not give you  the  font	 options  that
       pbmtext does, though.

       Another	way  is to use pbmtext to create an image containing the text,
       then use pamcomp to overlay the text image onto your  base  image.   To
       make  only  the text (and not the entire rectangle containing it) cover
       the base image, you will need to give pamcomp a mask,  via  its	-alpha
       option.	You can just use the text image itself as the mask, as long as
       you also specify the -invert option to pamcomp.

       If you want to overlay colored text instead of  black,  just  use  ppm-
       change  to  change  all black pixels to the color of your choice before
       overlaying the text image.  But still use the original black and	 white
       image for the alpha mask.

       If  you want the text at an angle, use pnmrotate on the text image (and
       alpha mask) before overlaying.


FONTS
       There are three kinds of fonts you an use with pbmtext:



       o      built in

       o      BDF

       o      PBM



   BDF Font
       BDF is an ancient font format that at one time was standard for	the  X
       Window System.  Now, you don't see it very often, but you can find some
       BDF	      fonts		on	       the	       Xfree86
       <http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/fonts/bdf/>	 web site.

       You  can get the full package of the BDF fonts from XFree86 (see above)
       from the Netpbm web site <http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/bdffont.tgz> .


   PBM Font
       To create a font as a PBM file (to use with the -font option), you just
       create a PBM image of the text matrix below.

       The  first  step is to display text matrix below on the screen, e.g. in
       an X11 window.


	   M ',/^_[`jpqy| M

	   /  !'#$%&'()*+ /
	   < ,-./01234567 <
	   > 89:;<=>?@ABC >
	   @ DEFGHIJKLMNO @
	   _ PQRSTUVWXYZ[ _
	   { \]^_`abcdefg {
	   } hijklmnopqrs }
	   ~ tuvwxyz{|}~  ~

	   M ',/^_[`jpqy| M


       Make sure it's a fixed width font -- This should display as  a  perfect
       rectangle.

       Also, try to use a simple display program.  Pbmtext divides this into a
       matrix of cells, all the same size, each containing one	character,  so
       it  is  important that whatever you use to display it display with uni-
       form horizontal and vertical spacing.  Fancy word  processing  programs
       sometimes  stretch  characters in both directions to fit certain dimen-
       sions, and that won't work.  Sometimes a display program scales a  font
       to  show a character larger or smaller than its natural size.  That too
       won't often work because the rounding involved in such  scaling	causes
       non-uniform distances between characters.

       If  you	display	 the text matrix improperly, the usual symptom is that
       when you try to use the font,  pbmtext  fails  with  an	error  message
       telling you that the number of lines in the font isn't divisible by 11,
       or it can't find the blank band around the inner rectangle.   Sometimes
       the  symptom is that one of the characters displays with a piece of the
       character that is next to it in the matrix.   For  example,  'l'	 might
       display with a little piece of the 'm' attached on its right.

       Do  a  screen grab or window dump of that text, using for instance xwd,
       xgrabsc, or screendump.	Convert the result into a pbm file.  If neces-
       sary, use pamcut to remove anything you grabbed in addition to the text
       pictured above (or be a	wimp  and  use	a  graphical  editor  such  as
       ImageMagick).  Finally, run it through pnmcrop.	to make sure the edges
       are right up against the text.  pbmtext can figure out  the  sizes  and
       spacings from that.



SEE ALSO
       pbmtextps(1),  pamcut(1),  pnmcrop(1), pamcomp(1), ppmchange(1), pnmro-
       tate(1), ppmlabel(1), pstopnm(1), pbm(1)


AUTHOR
       Copyright (C) 1993 by Jef Poskanzer and George Phillips



netpbm documentation		 26 April 2007		Pbmtext User Manual(0)