EXTRACTBB(1)

🎀 EXTRACTBB(1) · DVIPDFMx 🎀

bestie, let's talk about extractbb 💖 it's the DVIPDFMx manual page and it's giving bounding boxes 📦✨

✨ NAME ✨

okay so the names are extractbb and ebb, and they both do the same job: pulling bounding box info out of graphics files 🦋

💅 SYNOPSIS 💅

extractbb [-v|-q] [-O] [-m|-x] file...

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so this is the main vibe 🧚 for every JPEG, PNG, or PDF file you hand it on the command line, extractbb digs up the bounding box info and saves it into a file with the extension .xbb, plus some header info. dvipdfmx (or other programs) can then use those files, iykyk 🫶 for PDF files it also reports the number of pages and the PDF version number, so you get extra tea ☕ the input extension can be upper or lower case, no judgment 💜

if you call it as ebb, the output is written in the “bb” format (with extension .bb) that dvipdfm uses instead 🍓 and Xbb can be set up as a synonym for extractbb on your system, if you're into that 🌈

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -v — be verbose, tell me everything 📣
• -q — be quiet 🤫
• -O — write the output to standard output instead of a file 👑
• -m — write the output in dvipdfm's “bb” format 🦋
• -x — write the output in dvipdfmx's “xbb” format ✨ this one is the default, and it's the same format pdfTeX uses 💅

🧚 OUTPUT FORMATS 🧚

okay so here's the tea on the bb and xbb formats 🫖

the original ebb (from dvipdfm) ignored density info in bitmap images and made bounding boxes with 100px = 72bp = 1in. ngl that looks bad for screenshots especially 😭

so extractbb (from dvipdfmx) actually uses density info when it's there 🔥 if it isn't, it makes the bounding box with 100px = 100bp, which is what pdfTeX does. main character energy 👑

🙈 BUGS 🙈

bestie, heads up ⚠️ there is currently no way to pick which bounding box gets used for PDF files. it will always take the first one from this list: ArtBox, TrimBox, BleedBox, MediaBox. (often only MediaBox is defined 🥲) also, the reported bounding box always refers to the first page in a PDF file, so if you were hoping for page five, sorry babe 💀

💜 AUTHOR 💜

extractbb was written by the DVIPDFMx project team <dvipdfmx@ktug.or.kr>, based on the program ebb by Mark A. Wicks 🫶

this manual page was also written by the DVIPDFMx project team, based on a manual page Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch> wrote for the Debian GNU/Linux system 🌷 it may be used, modified, and/or redistributed by others without contacting the authors, so go wild 🌈

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bestie, that's the whole page 💖 this is the DVIPDFMx manual for EXTRACTBB(1), last updated 20120420 (20 April 2012) ✨ slay forever 💅🎀