DDBUGTOPBM(1)

💖 ddbugtopbm — the Ddbugtopbm User Manual, bestie edition 💖

okay so you found a manual page in section 1 of the general commands manual, and it's all about ddbugtopbm, and I am genuinely obsessed, so let's get into it 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

ddbugtopbm — converts Diddle or DiddleBug sketches into PBM files 🖼️✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ddbugtopbm

that's it. that's the whole synopsis. no flags, no args, she reads from standard input like the icon she is 💅

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🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

here's how you actually run her — just pipe a DB file in:

ddbugtopbm </path/to/palm/backup/dir/DiddleBugDB.pdb

ddbugtopbm </path/to/palm/backup/dir/DiddleDB.pdb

ddbugtopbm </path/to/palm/backup/dir/DiddleIDB.pdb

three different DBs, three different vibes, same little program 🫶

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

so. this program is part of Netpbm(1). 💖

ddbugtopbm converts all the sketches hanging out in a database used by the PalmOS programs Diddle or DiddleBug into PBM files, and it names them appropriately, because of course it does. ✨

the backup copy of DiddleBug's database that you're supposed to feed her as input is usually called DiddleBugDB.pdb. classic. but if you use the original Diddle, that one has two separate DBs:

• DiddleDB.pdb — holds the unnamed scratch sketches (mystery sketches, we love a mystery 🕵️)
• DiddleIDB.pdb — holds the saved (and named) sketches, the ones listed by its index option

and yeah, you can feed this program any of these three on standard input. all three. she's not picky. 😌

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

okay so real talk: there are no command line options defined specifically for ddbugtopbm. none. zero. nada.

but — and this is the important part — she does recognize the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm. (See Common Options.) so you're not totally option-less, bestie, you're just using the shared ones 🌈

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🎀 USING THE PROGRAM 🎀

here's my recommendation, and I mean it: don't run ddbugtopbm from your Palm backup directory. like, don't run it from the directory the DB will normally be in. I know, I know, it's right there. resist. 🙈

instead, run it from some other directory — maybe you make a directory purely to hold the PBM files, just to keep things simple, which is honestly such a clean-girl move — and then use an absolute or relative path to the DB. 💖

the filenames used for the output PBMs are based on the names given to each sketch. and if you have an unnamed sketch? she gets a name along the lines of sketch-0123.pbm. cute, right? ✨

now the important part: the named sketches will overwrite any existing PBM file with the same name. the unnamed ones won't — they'll just try using another filename instead. (and honestly I think this is probably the right approach, because you can't really tell the unnamed sketches apart anyway. they're all just little guys. 😭)

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💀 LIMITATIONS 💀

okay, the fine print, and I need you to listen:

the DiddleBug DB reader is only known to work with DBs from DiddleBug version 2.50. but it should probably work on later versions, and I think it'll work on DBs from version 2.15 as well. "probably." "I think." yeah. that's the confidence level here. 🙈

it might fall over if fed an empty database, and it doesn't do much (if any) checking of the input.

⚠️ fr fr: no real input validation. feed her something weird and she may simply perish. 💀

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🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Russell Marks (rus@svgalib.org). ✨

and Mitch Blevins's decompression code is directly from DiddleBug itself — which, like ddbugtopbm, is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. shoutout to Mitch, shoutout to the GPL, periodt. 👑

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• palmtopnm(1)
• pbm(1)

also, Jens-Chr. Heyer's didcon script does something similar, so if you want the parallel-universe version of this tool, go look at that one 🦋

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🌈 HISTORY 🌈

ddbugtopbm was new in Netpbm 10.18 (August 2003). it was written and independently distributed in August 2002. so she's been doing this for a minute. iconic behavior. 💅

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📜 DOCUMENT SOURCE 📜

this manual page was generated by the Netpbm tool makeman from HTML source. the master documentation lives at:

http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/ddbugtopbm.html

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🫶 this came out of the netpbm documentation, dated 21 August 2002 — so like, shoutout to 2002, and shoutout to you for reading all the way to the bottom. mwah 💖✨🎀