picttoppm

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 29 November 1991
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NAME

picttoppm - convert a Macintosh PICT file into a portable pixmap

SYNOPSIS

picttoppm [-verbose] [-fullres] [-noheader] [-quickdraw] [-fontdirfile] [pictfile]

DESCRIPTION

Reads a PICT file (version 1 or 2) and outputs a portable pixmap. Useful as the first step in converting a scanned image to something that can be displayed on Unix.

OPTIONS

-fontdir file: Make the list of BDF fonts in ``file'' available for use by picttoppm when drawing text. See below for the format of the fontdir file.
-fullres: Force any images in the PICT file to be output with at least their full resolution. A PICT file may indicate that a contained image is to be scaled down before output. This option forces images to retain their sizes and prevent information loss. Use of this option disables all PICT operations except images.
-noheader: Do not skip the 512 byte header that is present on all PICT files. This is useful when you have PICT data that was not stored in the data fork of a PICT file.
-quickdraw: Execute only pure quickdraw operations. In particular, turn off the interpretation of special PostScript printer operations.
-verbose: Turns on verbose mode which prints a a whole bunch of information that only picttoppm hackers really care about.

BUGS

The PICT file format is a general drawing format. picttoppm does not support all the drawing commands, but it does have full support for any image commands and reasonable support for line, rectangle, polgon and text drawing. It is useful for converting scanned images and some drawing conversion.

Memory is used very liberally with at least 6 bytes needed for every pixel. Large bitmap PICT files will likely run your computer out of memory.

FONT DIR FILE FORMAT

picttoppm has a built in default font and your local installer probably provided adequate extra fonts. You can point picttoppm at more fonts which you specify in a font directory file. Each line in the file is either a comment line which must begin with ``#'' or font information. The font information consists of 4 whitespace spearated fields. The first is the font number, the second is the font size in pixels, the third is the font style and the fourth is the name of a BDF file containing the font. The BDF format is defined by the X window system and is not described here.

The font number indicates the type face. Here is a list of known font numbers and their faces.

0       Chicago
1       application font
2       New York
3       Geneva
4       Monaco
5       Venice
6       London
7       Athens
8       San Franciso
9       Toronto
11      Cairo
12      Los Angeles
20      Times Roman
21      Helvetica
22      Courier
23      Symbol
24      Taliesin

The font style indicates a variation on the font. Multiple variations may apply to a font and the font style is the sum of the variation numbers which are:

1       Boldface
2       Italic
4       Underlined
8       Outlined
16      Shadow
32      Condensed
64      Extended

Obviously the font defintions are strongly related to the Macintosh. More font numbers and information about fonts can be found in Macintosh documentation.

AUTHOR

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Time: 08:50:58 GMT, January 07, 2023