Pnmtopnm User Manual(0)                 Pnmtopnm User Manual(0)



Table Of Contents


NAME
       pnmtopnm - copy a PNM image

SYNOPSIS
       pnmtopnm

       [pnmfile]


DESCRIPTION
       This program is part of Netpbm(1).

       pnmtopnm  simply  copies a PNM image to Standard Output.
       The output has the same major PNM format (PBM,  PGM,  or
       PPM) and maxval as the input.  This may seem an unneces-
       sary duplication of cat, but it lets you convert between
       the  plain  (ASCII)  and raw (binary) subformats of PNM.
       Use the -plain Netpbm common option to ensure the output
       is  plain PNM, and don't use -plain to ensure the output
       is raw PNM.  See
        Common Options .

       You don't normally need to convert between the PNM  sub-
       formats,  because  any  program  that  uses  the  Netpbm
       library to read a  PNM  image  will  read  all  of  them
       directly.   But  there  are a lot of programs that don't
       use the Netpbm library and understand only the raw  for-
       mat.  Plain format is nice because it is human readable;
       people often use it to debug programs that  process  PNM
       images.

       pnmtopnm  is  really  just  another name for the program
       pamtopnm.  The latter does  the  job  because  like  any
       Netpbm  program that takes PAM input via the Netpbm pro-
       gramming library facilities, it also takes PNM input.


HISTORY
       pnmtopnm was new in Netpbm 10.23 (July 2004).  It  obso-
       leted  pnmtoplainpnm, which specifically did the conver-
       sion to plain PNM.  There was no program  to  explicitly
       convert  to  raw  PNM,  but  many Netpbm programs can be
       made, with the right options, to be idempotent (i.e.  to
       do the same thing as pnmtopnm).

       Then  David  Jones  realized  that the existing pamtopnm
       already did everything that pnmtopnm did and more, so in
       Netpbm  10.27  (March  2005),  pnmtopnm became simply an
       alternate name for pamtopnm.


SEE ALSO
       ppmtoppm(1) pgmtopgm(1) pamtopnm(1) pnm(1)



netpbm documentation     24 March 2005  Pnmtopnm User Manual(0)
