# pbmtextps

Updated: 15 June 2016
Table Of Contents

## NAME

pbmtextps - render text into a PBM image using a postscript interpreter

## SYNOPSIS

pbmtextps [-font fontname] [-fontsize float] [-resolution n] [-leftmargin=n [-rightmargin=n [-topmargin=n [-bottommargin=n [-ascent=n [-descent=n [-pad] [-crop] [-stroke n] [-verbose] [-dump-ps] text

## DESCRIPTION

This program is part of Netpbm.

pbmtextps takes a single line of text from the command line and renders it into a PBM image. The image is of a single line of text; newline characters in the input have no effect.

See pbmtext for a more sophisticated generator of text, but using less common font formats. pbmtext can generate multiple lines of text.

The -plain common option has no effect before Netpbm 10.42 (March 2008). The output is always raw PBM.

### Margins

By default, the image is cropped at the top and the right. It is not cropped at the left or bottom so that the text begins at the same position relative to the origin. The size of the default left and bottom margins is explained below.

You can set whatever margin you want with options -leftmargin, -rightmargin, -topmargin and -bottommargin. The specified amount of white space gets added to the far edge of type, e.g. if you specify 10 points for -topmargin, you will get 10 points of white space above the highest character on the line. Specify 0 to crop a side.

-ascent adds white space to the top to reach a specified distance above the text baseline, and -descent adds white space to to the bottom to reach a specified distance below the text baseline.

-ascent and -descent are more useful than -topmargin and -bottomargin when you render two pieces of text (in separate invocations of pbmtextps) that you will concatenate horizontally. With -ascent and -descent, the two images will be the same height with the text baseline in the same place. With -topmargin and -bottommargin, that may not be the case.

Example:

         $ pbmtextps -font=Times-Roman -descent=20 \
              "The soup is called" > a1.pbm
         $ pbmtextps -font=Itallic -descent=20 "Goulash." > a2.pbm
         $ pnmcat -lr -jb a1.pbm a2.pbm > out.pbm

If you have -ascent, there is probably no point in specifying -topmargin too, but if you do, the effect is cumulative. The same is true of -descent and -bottommargin.

-pad pads the image on the top and bottom to the where the highest and lowest characters in the font would reach, even if you don't have those characters in your text. This is useful if you will generate multiple images of text (with multiple invocations of pbmtextps and concatenate them vertically to create a multiline text image. -pad makes sure the lines in this image are equally spaced.

Example:

        $ pbmtextps "cat"   | pamfile
        $ pbmtextps "Catty" | pamfile

The commands above, with no -pad, show that the "Catty" image is higher because capital C reaches high and "y" reaches low.

        $ pbmtextps -pad "cat"   | pamfile
        $ pbmtextps -pad "Catty" | pamfile

The commands above, with -pad, show that both images are the same height.

If you specify -pad with -ascent or -descent, the larger value is effective.

-crop makes the program crop all sides to the far edge of the type. It is the same as `-leftmargin=0 -rightmargin=0 -topmargin=0 -bottommargin=0`.

You cannot specify any other margin-affecting options with -crop.

The default top margin, when you specify neither -ascent, -topmargin, nor -pad, is as if you specified topmargin=0.

The default bottom margin, when you specify neither -descent, -bottommargin, nor -pad, is as if you specified -descent=1.5*fontsize.

The default left margin, when you do not specify -leftmargin, is as if you specified -leftmargin=0.5*fontsize.

The default right margin, when you do not specify -rightmargin, is as if you specified -rightmargin=0.

## OPTIONS

-font=fontname

  This specifies the font to use. fontname is the name of any valid postscript font which is installed on the system.

  The default is TimesRoman.

  Warning: if fontname does not name a valid font, pbmtextps just uses the default font. It does not tell you it is doing this.

-fontsize=float
  This is the size of the font in points. See the -resolution option for information on how to interpret this size.

  The default is 24 points.

  Before Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016), this has to be a whole number.

-resolution=n
  This is the resolution in dots per inch of distance measurements pertaining to generation of the image. PBM images don't have any inherent resolution, so a distance such as "1 inch" doesn't mean anything unless you separately specify what resolution you're talking about. That's what this option does.

  In particular, the meaning of the font size is determined by this resolution. If the font size is 24 points and the resolution is 150 dpi, then the font size is 50 pixels.

  The default is 150 dpi.

-leftmargin=n
-rightmargin=n
-topmargin=n
-bottommargin=n
  These options control the margins added to the image, measured from the far edge of the type. See Margins for details.

  All sizes are in points, as a floating point number.

  These options were new in Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016).

-ascent=n
-descent=n
  These options control the margins added to the image, measured from the text baseline. See Margins for details.

  Sizes are in points, as a floating point number.

  These options were new in Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016).

-pad
  This pads the image on the top and bottom to the where the highest and lowest characters in the font would reach, even if you don't have those characters in your text. See Margins for details.

  This option was new in Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016).

-crop
  This makes the program crop all sides to the far edge of the type. It is the same as `-leftmargin=0 -rightmargin=0 -topmargin=0 -bottommargin=0`. See Margins for details.

  This option was new in Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016).

-stroke=n
  This is the width of line, in points, to use for stroke font. There is no default stroke width because the characters are solid by default.
-verbose
  This option makes pbmtextps display extra information on Standard Error about its processing.
-dump-ps
  This option makes pbmtextps write to Standard Output the Postscript program it would use to create the image, rather than the image itself. You can use this as input to a Postscript interpreter (such as Ghostscript or a a printer) or to understand the program better.

  This option was new in Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016).

## USAGE

You can generate antialiased text by using a larger resolution than the default and scaling the image down using pamscale.

See the manual for the similar pbmtext for more advice on usage.

## HISTORY

pbmtextps was added to Netpbm in Release 10.0 (June 2002).

## SEE ALSO

pbmtext, pamcut, pnmcrop, pamcomp, ppmchange, pnmrotate, pamscale, ppmlabel, pbm

## AUTHOR

Copyright (C) 2002 by James McCann

## Table Of Contents

- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- OPTIONS
- USAGE
- HISTORY
- SEE ALSO
- AUTHOR