svgtopam(1) - Man pages

Svgtopam User Manual(1) General Commands Manual Svgtopam User Manual(1)

NAME
svgtopam - convert an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) image to Netpbm
format

SYNOPSIS
svgtopam [-trace] [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).

svgtopam reads an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) image as input and pro-
duces a PAM image as output.

svgtopam is so weak that it is probably not useful in general for con-
verting SVG images. It understands only <path> SVG elements which use
only the "M", "L", and "z" commands, and only those that use whole num-
ber arguments. This is sufficient for converting most of what comes out
of pamtosvg (not by coincidence - the program was developed for the spe-
cific task of testing pamtosvg), but the main reason it is part of
Netpbm is to provide a base for someone to create a full SVG to Netpbm
converter.

SVG is a vector image format, which means it describes curves that com-
pose an image. By contrast, PNM is a raster format, which means it de-
scribes dots that compose an image. The main practical difference be-
tween the two types is that you can scale vector images better. A vec-
tor image also takes a lot less data to describe an image if the image
is composed of simple curves.

That means it is really an understatement to say that svgtopam is an im-
age format converter. It's really an image drawer, not unlike ppmdraw.

For more information on SVG, see ]8;;http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/\the Worldwide Web Consortium's SVG web
page]8;;\ .

OPTIONS
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm
(most notably -quiet, see ]8;;index.html#commonoptions\ Common Options]8;;\ ), svgtopam recognizes the
following command line option:

-trace This option makes svgtopam issue messages describing the drawing.