Ppmtosixel User Manual(1) General Commands Manual Ppmtosixel User Manual(1)
NAME
ppmtosixel - convert a PPM image to DEC sixel format
SYNOPSIS
ppmtosixel
[-raw]
[-margin]
[-7bit]
[ppmfile]
DESCRIPTION
This program is part of Netpbm(1).
ppmtosixel reads a PPM image as input and produces sixel commands (SIX)
as output. The output is formatted for color printing (e.g. for a DEC
LJ250 color inkjet printer) or for color display on DEC VT terminals and
terminal emulators (VT240 and beyond).
If RGB values from the PPM file do not have maxval=100, ppmtosixel
rescales them to maxval 100. A printer control header and a color as-
signment table begin the SIX file. Image data is in a compressed format
by default. A printer control footer ends the image file.
OPTIONS
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm
(most notably -quiet, see ]8;;index.html#commonoptions\ Common Options]8;;\ ), ppmtosixel recognizes the
following command line options:
-raw If you specify this, each pixel will be explicitly described in
the image file. If -raw is not specified, output will default to
compressed format in which identical adjacent pixels are replaced
by "repeat pixel" commands. A raw file is often an order of mag-
nitude larger than a compressed file and prints much slower.
-margin
If you don't specify -margin, the image will start at the left
margin (of the window, paper, or whatever). If you do specify
-margin, a 1.5 inch left margin will offset the image.
-7bit If you don't specify -7bit, each control code will be expressed
as a single, 8-bit "C1" character. If you do specify -7bit, each
control code will be expressed using two, 7-bit "C0" characters.
(See ]8;;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes\C0 and C1 control codes]8;;\ for more information.) In other
words, -7bit produces more portable sixel files, and its absence
produces smaller sixel files.
This option was new in Netpbm 11.04 (September 2023).
PRINTING
Generally, sixel files must reach the printer unfiltered. Use the lpr
-x option or cat filename > /dev/tty0?.
LIMITATIONS
Upon rescaling, truncation of the least significant bits of RGB values
may result in poor color conversion. If the original PPM maxval was
greater than 100, rescaling also reduces the image depth. While the ac-
tual RGB values from the ppm file are more or less retained, the color
palette of the LJ250 may not match the colors on your screen. This
seems to be a printer limitation.
SEE ALSO
ppm(1)
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 1991 by Rick Vinci.
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/ppmtosixel.html
netpbm documentation 1 August 2023 Ppmtosixel User Manual(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 06:14:11 CET 2025.