Pnmtopalm User Manual(1) General Commands Manual Pnmtopalm User Manual(1)
NAME
pnmtopalm - convert a PNM image to a Palm Bitmap
SYNOPSIS
pnmtopalm
[-verbose]
[-depth=N]
[-maxdepth=N]
[-colormap]
[-transparent=colorspec]
[-density=N]
[-offset]
[-withdummy] [-scanline_compression | -rle_compression | -packbits_com-
pression]
[pnmfile]
Minimum unique abbreviation of option is acceptable. You may use double
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).
pnmtopalm reads a PNM image as input, from Standard Input or pnmfile and
produces a Palm Bitmap as output.
Palm Bitmap files are either grayscale files with 1, 2, or 4 bits per
pixel, or mapped color files with 8 bit per pixel, or a direct color
file with 16 bits per pixel, and pnmtopalm chooses this color depth
based on the maxval and number of colors in the input, unless you spec-
ify a depth (bits per pixel) with -depth. You can also specify a maxi-
mum depth with -maxdepth to partially constrain pnmtopalm's choice. In-
put files must have an appropriate number and set of colors for the se-
lected output constraints.
This often means that you should run the PNM image through pnmquant or
pnmremap before you pass it to pnmtopalm. Netpbm comes with several
colormap files you can use with pnmremap for this purpose. They are
palmgray2.map (4 shades of gray for a depth of 2), palmgray4.map (16
shades of gray for a depth of 4), and palmcolor8.map (232 colors in de-
fault Palm colormap). In a standard Netpbm installation, these are in
the Netpbm data directory, and you can find the Netpbm data directory
with a netpbm-config --datadir shell command.
Example:
pnmremap myimage.ppm \
-mapfile=$(netpbm-config --datadir)/palmgray2.map \
| pnmtopalm -depth=2 >myimage.palm
Compressed Palm Bitmap files, at least the ones pnmtopalm knows how to
create, cannot have more than 8 bits per pixel. pnmtopalm defaults to 8
bits per pixel if you specify a compressed output. You can specify the
number of bits per pixel explicitly with -depth. -maxdepth has the same
effect as -depth. If you specify more than 8 bits per pixel with either
of these, pnmtopalm fails.
Palm Bitmap Version
pnmtopalm generates a Version 0, 1, 2, or 3 Palm Bitmap. It generates
the oldest (lowest) version it can for the given image and the options
you specify.
• If you specify a density (-density option) higher than "low," the
version is at least 3.
• If you specify transparency (-transparent option) or any compres-
sion, the version is at least 2.
• If you specify a custom colormap (-colormap option), the version
is at least 1.
• If the image has more than one bit per pixel, the version is at
least 1. The image has more than one bit per pixel if you spec-
ify it with -depth or if you let it default and the image has
more than two colors (or shades of gray).
All releases of Palm OS can read a Version 0 bitmap. Palm OS 3.0 and
later can read a Version 1 bitmap. Palm OS 3.5 and later can read a
Version 2 bitmap. To read a Version 3 bitmap, you need Palm OS Garnet
or a handheld running the High Density Display Feature Set.
OPTIONS
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm
(most notably -quiet, see ]8;;index.html#commonoptions\ Common Options]8;;\ ), pnmtopalm recognizes the
following command line options:
-verbose
Display the format of the output file.
-depth=N
Produce a file of depth N, where N must be either 1, 2, 4, 8, or
16. Because the default Palm 8-bit colormap is not grayscale, if
the input is a grayscale or monochrome image, the output will
never be more than 4 bits deep, regardless of the specified
depth. Note that 8-bit color works only in PalmOS 3.5 (and
higher), and 16-bit direct color works only in PalmOS 4.0 (and
higher). However, the 16-bit direct color format is also compat-
ible with the various PalmOS 3.x versions used in the Handspring
Visor, so these images may also work in that device.
-maxdepth=N
Produce a file of minimal depth, but in any case less than N bits
wide. If you specify 16-bit, the output will always be 16-bit
direct color.
-offset
Set the nextDepthOffset field in the palm file header to indicate
the end of the file (and pad the end of the file to 4 bytes,
since nextDepthOffset can point only to 4 byte boundaries).
A palm image file can contain multiple renditions of the same im-
age, with different color depths, so a viewer can choose one ap-
propriate for the display. The nextDepthOffset field tells where
in the stream the next rendition begins.
pnmtopalm creates a file that contains only one image, but you
can separately concatenate multiple one-image files to create a
multi-image file. If you do that, you'll need to use -offset so
that the resulting concatenation is a correct stream.
By default (if you don't specify -offset), pnmtopalm generates a
nextDepthOffset field that says there is no following image (and
does not add any padding after the image).
Version 3 Palm Bitmaps actually have a nextBitmapOffset field in-
stead of the nextDepthOffset. The foregoing applies to whichever
is relevant.
The -offset option was new in Netpbm 10.26 (January 2005). Be-
fore that, pnmtopalm always set the nextDepthOffset field to
"none."
Before Netpbm 10.27 (March 2005), you cannot use -offset if you
create a compressed raster (because pnmtopalm isn't smart enough
to be able to know the size of the image at the time it writes
the header). You also cannot use it with 16 bit color depth or
with the -colormap option, for much the same reason.
-withdummy
This option tells pnmtopalm to put in the stream, after the im-
age, a dummy image header to introduce subsequent high density
images.
This dummy image header is a special sequence specified in Palm
Bitmap specifications. It looks to an older Palm Bitmap inter-
preter like an invalid image header, so such an interpreter will
stop reading the stream there. But a new Palm Bitmap interpreter
recognizes it for what it is (just something to choke an old in-
terpreter) and skips over it. Presumably, you will add to the
stream after this high density images which would confuse an
older interpreter.
If you specify -withdummy, you must also specify -offset, since
it doesn't make any sense otherwise.
-withdummy was new in Netpbm 10.27 (March 2005).
-colormap
Build a custom colormap and include it in the output file. This
is not recommended by Palm, for efficiency reasons. Otherwise,
pnmtopalm uses the default Palm colormap for color output.
-transparent=colorspec
Marks one particular color as fully transparent.
colorspec is as described for the ]8;;libnetpbm_image.html#colorname\argument of the pnm_parsec-
olor() library routine]8;;\ .
Transparency works only on Palm OS 3.5 and higher.
-scanline_compression
Specifies that the output Palm bitmap will use the Palm scanline
compression scheme. Scanline compression works only in Palm OS
2.0 and higher.
-rle_compression
Specifies that the output Palm bitmap will use the Palm RLE com-
pression scheme. RLE compression works only with Palm OS 3.5 and
higher.
-packbits_compression
Specifies that the output Palm bitmap will use the Palm packbits
compression scheme. Packbits compression works only with Palm OS
4.0 and higher.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.27 (March 2005).
-density=N
This specifies the Palm Bitmap density. The density is a number
that is proportional to the resolution the image should have when
displayed. The proportionality factor is up to whatever is doing
the displaying, but it's helpful to think of these numbers as be-
ing pixels per inch. The allowable values are:
• 72
• 108
• 144
• 216
• 288
This option was new in Netpbm 10.27 (March 2005). Earlier Netpbm
could not generate Version 3 Palm Bitmaps, so there was no such
thing as density.
SEE ALSO
palmtopnm(1), pdbimgtopam(1), pnmquant(1), pnmremap(1), pnm(1)
NOTES
Palm Bitmaps may contains multiple renditions of the same bitmap, in
different depths. To construct an N-multiple-rendition Palm Bitmap with
pnmtopalm, first construct renditions 1 through N-1 using the -offset
option, then construct the Nth image without the -offset option. Then
concatenate the individual renditions together in a single file using
cat.
If you will include both high density and low density renditions, put
the high density images last and when you create the last of the low
density images, use the -withdummy option.
If you specify the Palm packbits compression scheme for a 16-bit direct
color bitmap, this program generates an invalid bitmap.
AUTHORS
This program was originally written as ppmtoTbmp.c, by Ian Goldberg and
George Caswell. It was completely re-written by Bill Janssen to add
color, compression, and transparency function. Copyright 1995-2001 by
Ian Goldberg, George Caswell, and Bill Janssen.
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/pnmtopalm.html
netpbm documentation 25 August 2017 Pnmtopalm User Manual(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 06:36:54 CET 2025.