Pbmtoescp2 User Manual(1) General Commands Manual Pbmtoescp2 User Manual(1)
NAME
pbmtoescp2 - convert a PBM image to a ESC/P2 printer file
SYNOPSIS
pbmtoescp2
[-compress=compressionmode] [-resolution={180|360|720}]
[-stripeheight=n] [-formfeed] [-raw] [pbmfile]
All options can be abbreviated to their shortest unique prefix. You may
use two hyphens instead of one to designate an option. You may use ei-
ther white space or equals signs between an option name and its value.
DESCRIPTION
This program is part of Netpbm(1).
pbmtoescp2 reads a PBM image as input. It produces an ESC/P2 raster
graphic printer control stream as output.
This program creates an output that is printable on Epson printers that
understand the ESC/P2 printer control language (e.g. the Stylus models).
For older Epson 9-pin dot matrix printers, which use the ESC/P protocol,
see pbmtoepson.
The printed output has one pixel for each pixel of the input image, ex-
cept that it is padded up to the stripe size (see -stripeheight option)
vertically and to a multiple of 8 columns horizontally. Before Netpbm
10.72 (September 2015), the output is instead truncated to those bound-
aries.
Input is read from file pbmfile if specified, otherwise from stdin. Out-
put is written to stdout.
OPTIONS
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm
(most notably -quiet, see ]8;;index.html#commonoptions\ Common Options]8;;\ ), pbmtoescp2 recognizes the
following command line options:
-compress=compressionmode
This determines the compression mode that pbmtoescp2 uses in its
output. Valid values for compressionmode are 0 and 1. -com-
press=0 results in a printer control stream with uncompressed
raster graphic data. -compress=1 results in a printer control
stream with RLE compressed raster graphic data (RLE means Run
Length Encoding). The default is -compress=1.
-resolution=dpi
This determines the horizontal and the vertical print resolution
set in the printer control stream. Another way of looking at it
is a declaration of what the resolution of the input image is
(PBM images don't have inherent resolution). Valid values for
dpi are 180, 360, and 720. See ]8;;#hints\hints]8;;\ for more information on
this.
The default is -resolution=360.
Before Netpbm 10.72 (September 2015), 720 is not valid.
-stripeheight=n
This option controls the height in lines of the stripes in the
output.
The valid stripe heights in the printer language are 1, 8, and
24, but it is capable of expressing any height up to 255 and pbm-
toescp2 accepts any value in the range 1-255. It issues a warn-
ing, though, if you choose something other than 1, 8, or 24.
The default is 24.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.72 (September 2015). Before
that, the stripe size is always 24.
-formfeed
This option causes pbmtoescp2 to place a formfeed command at the
end of the output.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.72 (September 2015).
-raw This option causes pbmtoescp2 to generate only the data blocks.
It does not generate printer commands to set up the output (for
example, setting the line spacing).
You can use this to insert graphics into a larger printer command
stream.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.72 (September 2015).
HINTS
RLE compresses very well bitmaps of line drawings, preferably horizontal
oriented contents like texts, sheets of music, etc. However, bitmaps
derived from photographs are not ideal for RLE. In extreme cases, when
no byte repetitions occur in the input, the result will be even slightly
bigger than the input. To avoid this, use compression mode 0 to switch
off RLE.
Each pixel in the input PBM image becomes one dot in the printed output.
Therefore, you must make sure the width and height of the input are ap-
propriate for the print resolution you choose and the print area you
want. E.g. if you print at 180 dpi and want the image to print as 8
inches by 10, you must supply a PBM that is 1440 pixels wide by 1800
pixels high. You can adjust the size of the input with pamscale, pam-
stretch, pbmreduce, or pamenlarge.
SEE ALSO
escp2topbm(1), pbmtoepson(1), pamscale(1), pamstretch(1), pbmreduce(1),
pamenlarge(1), pbm(1)
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 2003 by Ulrich Walcher (u.walcher@gmx.de).
HISTORY
pbmtoescp2 was added to Netpbm in Release 10.18 (August 2003); it was
created around the same time.
DOCUMENT SOURCE
This manual page was generated by the Netpbm tool 'makeman' from HTML
source. The master documentation is at
http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pbmtoescp2.html
netpbm documentation 14 July 2015 Pbmtoescp2 User Manual(1)
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