NAME
dvipng - A DVI-to-PNG translator
SYNOPSIS
dvipng [options] filename
dvipng [options] [filename] -
DESCRIPTION
This program makes PNG and/or GIF graphics from DVI files as obtained
from TeX and its relatives.
If GIF support is enabled, GIF output is chosen by using the dvigif
binary or with the --gif option.
The benefits of dvipng/dvigif include
· Speed. It is a very fast bitmap-rendering code for DVI files, which
makes it suitable for generating large amounts of images on-the-
fly, as needed in preview-latex, WeBWorK and others.
· It does not read the postamble, so it can be started before TeX
finishes. There is a --follow switch that makes dvipng wait at end-
of-file for further output, unless it finds the POST marker that
indicates the end of the DVI.
· Interactive query of options. dvipng can read options interactively
through stdin, and all options are usable. It is even possible to
change the input file through this interface.
· Supports PK, VF, PostScript Type1, and TrueType fonts, subfonts
(i.e., as used in CJK-LaTeX), color specials, and inclusion of
PostScript, PNG, JPEG or GIF images.
· and more...
OPTIONS
Many of the parameterless options listed here can be turned off by
suffixing the option with a zero (0); for instance, to turn off page
reversal, use -r0. Such options are marked with a trailing *.
- Read additional options from standard input after processing the
command line.
--help
Print a usage message and exit.
--version
Print the version number and exit.
-bd num
-bd color_spec
-bd ’num color_spec’
Set the pixel width of the transparent border (default 0). Using
this option will make the image edges transparent, but it only
affects pixels with the background color. Giving a color_spec will
set the fallback color, to be used in viewers that cannot handle
transparency (the default is the background color). The color spec
should be in TeX color \special syntax, e.g., ’rgb 1.0 0.0 0.0’.
Setting the fallback color makes the default border width 1 px.
--bdpi num
Set the base (Metafont) resolution, both horizontal and vertical,
to num dpi (dots per inch). This option is necessary when manually
selecting Metafont mode with the --mode option (see below).
-bg color_spec
Choose background color for the images. This option will be ignored
if there is a background color \special in the DVI. The color spec
should be in TeX color \special syntax, e.g., ’rgb 1.0 0.0 0.0’.
You can also specify ’Transparent’ or ’transparent’ which will give
you a transparent background with the normal background as a
fallback color. A capitalized ’Transparent’ will give a full-alpha
transparency, while an all-lowercase ’transparent’ will give a
simple fully transparent background with non-transparent
antialiased pixels. The latter would be suitable for viewers who
cannot cope with a true alpha channel. GIF images do not support
full alpha transparency, so in case of GIF output, both variants
will use the latter behaviour.
-d num
Set the debug flags, showing what dvipng (thinks it) is doing. This
will work unless dvipng has been compiled without the "DEBUG"
option (not recommended). Set the flags as you need them, use -d -1
as the first option for maximum output.
-D num
Set the output resolution, both horizontal and vertical, to num dpi
(dots per inch).
One may want to adjust this to fit a certain text font size (e.g.,
on a web page), and for a text font height of font_px pixels (in
Mozilla) the correct formula is
<dpi> = <font_px> * 72.27 / 10 [px * TeXpt/in / TeXpt]
The last division by ten is due to the standard font height 10pt in
your document, if you use 12pt, divide by 12. Unfortunately, some
proprietary browsers have font height in pt (points), not pixels.
You have to rescale that to pixels, using the screen resolution
(default is usually 96 dpi) which means the formula is
<font_px> = <font_pt> * 96 / 72 [pt * px/in / (pt/in)]
On some high-res screens, the value is instead 120 dpi. Good luck!
--depth*
Report the depth of the image. This only works reliably when the
LaTeX style preview.sty from preview-latex is used with the active
option. It reports the number of pixels from the bottom of the
image to the baseline of the image. This can be used for vertical
positioning of the image in, e.g., web documents, where one would
use (Cascading StyleSheets 1)
<IMG SRC="<filename.png>" STYLE="vertical-align: -<depth>px">
The depth is a negative offset in this case, so the minus sign is
necessary, and the unit is pixels (px).
--dvinum*
Set this option to make the output page number be the TeX page
numbers rather than the physical page number. See the -o switch.
-fg color_spec
Choose foreground color for the images. This option will be ignored
if there is a foreground color \special in the DVI. The color spec
should be in TeX color \special syntax, e.g., ’rgb 1.0 0.0 0.0’.
--follow*
Wait for data at end-of-file. One of the benefits of dvipng is that
it does not read the postamble, so it can be started before TeX
finishes. This switch makes dvipng wait at end-of-file for further
output, unless it finds the POST marker that indicates the end of
the DVI. This is similar to tail -f but for DVI-to-PNG conversion.
--freetype*
Enable/disable FreeType font rendering (default on). This option is
available if the FreeType2 font library was present at compilation
time. If this is the case, dvipng will have direct support for
PostScript Type1 and TrueType fonts internally, rather than using
gsftopk for rendering the fonts. If you have PostScript versions of
Computer Modern installed, there will be no need to generate
bitmapped variants on disk of these. Then, you can render images at
different (and unusual) resolutions without cluttering the disk
with lots of bitmapped fonts. Note that if you have both FreeType
and T1lib on your system, FreeType will be preferred by dvipng. If
you for some reason would want to use T1lib rendering, use this
option.
--gamma num
Control the interpolation of colors in the greyscale anti-aliasing
color palette. Default value is 1.0. For 0 < num < 1, the fonts
will be lighter (more like the background), and for num > 1, the
fonts will be darker (more like the foreground).
--gif*
The images are output in the GIF format, if GIF support is enabled.
This is the default for the dvigif binary, which only will be
available when GIF support is enabled. GIF images are palette
images (see the --palette option) and does not support true alpha
channels (see the --bg option). See also the --png option.
--height*
Report the height of the image. This only works reliably when the
LaTeX style preview.sty from preview-latex is used with the active
option. It reports the number of pixels from the top of the image
to the baseline of the image. The total height of the image is
obtained as the sum of the values reported from --height and
--depth.
-l [=]num
The last page printed will be the first one numbered num. Default
is the last page in the document. If num is prefixed by an equals
sign, then it (and the argument to the -p option, if specified) is
treated as a physical (absolute) page number, rather than a value
to compare with the TeX \count0 values stored in the DVI file.
Thus, using -l =9 will end with the ninth page of the document, no
matter what the pages are actually numbered.
--mode mode
Use mode as the Metafont device name for the PK fonts (both for
path searching and font generation). This needs to be augmented
with the base device resolution, given with the --bdpi option. See
the file <ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/modes.mf> for a list of resolutions
and mode names for most devices.
-M* Turns off automatic PK font generation (mktexpk). This will have no
effect when using PostScript fonts, since no PK font generation
will be done anyway.
--noghostscript*
This switch prohibits the internal call to GhostScript for
displaying PostScript specials. --noghostscript0 turns the call
back on.
--nogssafer*
Normally, if GhostScript is used to render PostScript specials, the
GhostScript interpreter is run with the option -dSAFER. The
--nogssafer option runs GhostScript without -dSAFER. The -dSAFER
option in Ghostscript disables PostScript operators such as
deletefile, to prevent possibly malicious PostScript programs from
having any effect.
-o name
Send output to the file name. A single occurrence of %d or %01d,
..., %09d will be exchanged for the physical page number (this can
be changed, see the --dvinum switch). The default output filename
is file%d.png where the input DVI file was file.dvi.
-O x-offset,y-offset
Move the origin by x-offset,y-offset, a comma-separated pair of
dimensions such as .1in,-.3cm. The origin of the page is shifted
from the default position (of one inch down, one inch to the right
from the upper left corner of the paper) by this amount.
-p [=]num
The first page printed will be the first one numbered num. Default
is the first page in the document. If num is prefixed by an equals
sign, then it (and the argument to the -l option, if specified) is
treated as a physical (absolute) page number, rather than a value
to compare with the TeX \count0 values stored in the DVI file.
Thus, using -p =3 will start with the third page of the document,
no matter what the pages are actually numbered.
--palette*
Starting from dvipng 1.8, the output PNG will be a truecolor png
when an external image is included, to avoid unnecessary delay and
quality reduction, and enable the EPS translator to draw on a
transparent background and outside of the boundingbox. This switch
will force palette (256-color) output and make dvipng revert to the
old behaviour, where included images were opaque and always clipped
to the boundingbox. This will also override the --truecolor switch
if present.
--picky*
No images are output when a warning occurs. Normally, dvipng will
output an image in spite of a warning, but there may be something
missing in this image. One reason to use this option would be if
you have a more complete but slower fallback converter. Mainly,
this is useful for failed figure inclusion and unknown \special
occurrences, but warnings will also occur for missing or unknown
color specs and missing PK fonts.
--png*
The images are output in the PNG format. This is the default for
the dvipng binary. See also the --gif option.
-pp firstpage-lastpage
Print pages firstpage through lastpage; but not quite equivalent to
-p firstpage -l lastpage. For example, when rendering a book, there
may be several instances of a page in the DVI file (one in
"\frontmatter", one in "\mainmatter", and one in "\backmatter"). In
case of several pages matching, -pp firstpage-lastpage will render
all pages that matches the specified range, while -p firstpage -l
lastpage will render the pages from the first occurrence of
firstpage to the first occurrence of lastpage. This is the
(undocumented) behaviour of dvips. In dvipng you can give both
kinds of options, in which case you get all pages that matches the
range in -pp between the pages from -p to -l. Also multiple -pp
options accumulate, unlike -p and -l. The - separator can also be
:. Note that -pp -1 will be interpreted as "all pages up to and
including 1", if you want a page numbered -1 (only the table of
contents, say) put -pp -1--1, or more readable, -pp -1:-1.
-q* Run quietly. Don’t chatter about pages converted, etc. to standard
output; report no warnings (only errors) to standard error.
-Q num
Set the quality to num. That is, choose the number of antialiasing
levels for PK and T1lib rendering to be num*num+1. The default
value is 4 which gives 17 levels of antialiasing for antialiased
fonts from these two. If FreeType is available, its rendering is
unaffected by this option.
-r* Toggle output of pages in reverse/forward order. By default, the
first page in the DVI is output first.
--strict*
The program exits when a warning occurs. Normally, dvipng will
output an image in spite of a warning, but there may be something
missing in this image. One reason to use this option would be if
you have a more complete but slower fallback converter. See the
--picky option above for a list of when warnings occur.
-T image_size
Set the image size to image_size which can be either of bbox,
tight, or a comma-separated pair of dimensions hsize,vsize such as
.1in,.3cm. The default is bbox which produces a PNG that includes
all ink put on the page and in addition the DVI origin, located 1in
from the top and 1in from the left edge of the paper. This usually
gives whitespace above and to the left in the produced image. The
value tight will make dvipng only include all ink put on the page,
producing neat images.
--t1lib*
Enable/disable T1lib font rendering (default on). This option is
available if the T1lib font library was present at compilation
time. If this is the case, dvipng will have direct support for
PostScript Type1 fonts internally, rather than using gsftopk for
rendering the fonts. If you have PostScript versions of Computer
Modern installed, there will be no need to generate bitmapped
variants on disk of these. Then, you can render images at
different (and unusual) resolutions without cluttering the disk
with lots of bitmapped fonts. Note that if you have both FreeType
and T1lib on your system FreeType will be preferred by dvipng, and
if you for some reason rather want to use T1lib, give the option
--freetype0 (see above).
--truecolor*
This will make dvipng generate truecolor output. Note that
truecolor output is automatic if you include an external image in
your DVI, e.g., via a PostScript special (i.e., the graphics or
graphicx package). This switch is overridden by the --palette
switch.
-v* Enable verbose operation. This will currently indicate what fonts
is used, in addition to the usual output.
-x num
Set the x magnification ratio to num/1000. Overrides the
magnification specified in the DVI file. Must be between 10 and
100000. It is recommended that you use standard magstep values
(1095, 1200, 1440, 1728, 2074, 2488, 2986, and so on) to help
reduce the total number of PK files generated. num may be a real
number, not an integer, for increased precision.
-z num
Set the PNG compression level to num. This option is enabled if
your libgd is new enough. The default compression level is 1, which
selects maximum speed at the price of slightly larger PNGs. For an
older libgd, the hard-soldered value 5 is used. The include file
png.h says "Currently, valid values range from 0 - 9, corresponding
directly to the zlib compression levels 0 - 9 (0 - no compression,
9 - "maximal" compression). Note that tests have shown that zlib
compression levels 3-6 usually perform as well as level 9 for PNG
images, and do considerably fewer calculations. In the future,
these values may not correspond directly to the zlib compression
levels."
NOTES
The full manual is accessible in the info format, on most systems by
typing
info dvipng
COPYRIGHT
This program is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License
version 3, see the COPYING file in the dvipng distribution or
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
Copyright (c) 2002-2008 Jan-AAke Larsson