Manual: pbmtoescp2

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 either 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	lan‐
       guage  (e.g.  the  Stylus models).  For older Epson 9-pin dot matrix printers, which use the ESC/P protocol, see pbm‐
       toepson.

       The printed output has one pixel for each pixel of the input image, except 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 boundaries.

       Input is read from file pbmfile if specified, otherwise from stdin. Output is written to stdout.

OPTIONS
       In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (most notably  -quiet,  see	  Common Options  ),
       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.	 -compress=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	 in‐
	      herent resolution).  Valid values for dpi are 180, 360, and 720.	See hints  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 pbmtoescp2 accepts any value in the range 1-255.  It issues a warning,  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	 mu‐
       sic,  etc.   However, bitmaps derived from photographs are not ideal for RLE.  In extreme cases, when no byte repeti‐
       tions 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 appropriate 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, pamstretch, 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)