dvipng: Option details
4.2 Option details
==================
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.
Color.
'--bdpi NUM'
This option only has an effect when using bitmapped (PK) fonts.
The option sets 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. Color.
'-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. Debug options.
'-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: -DEPTHpx">
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'. Color.
'--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 (PK) variants on disk of these. Then,
you can render images at different (and unusual) resolutions
without cluttering the disk with lots of bitmapped fonts.
'--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'
This option only has an effect when using bitmapped (PK) fonts.
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.
(kpathsea)Unable to generate fonts.
'-M*'
This option only has an effect when using bitmapped (PK) fonts. It
turns off automatic PK font generation ('mktexpk').
'--nogs*'
This switch prohibits the internal call to GhostScript for
displaying PostScript specials. '--nogs0' 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.
'--norawps*'
Some packages generate raw PostScript specials, even non-rendering
such specials. This switch turns off the internal call to
GhostScript intended to display these raw PostScript specials.
'--norawps0' turns the call back on.
'-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*'
When an external image is included, 'dvipng' will automatically
switch to truecolor mode, 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 opaque
clipped image inclusion. 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 bitmapped fonts (PK), 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.
'--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.
'--width*'
Report the width of the image. See also '--height' and '--depth'.
'-x NUM'
This option is deprecated; it should not be used. It is much
better to select the output resolution directly with the '-D'
option. This option sets the magnification ratio to NUM/1000 and
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.
Info Catalog
dvipng: Option summary
dvipng: Command-line options