IDA(1)
IDA(1) β image viewing and editing program π
okay bestie, welcome to the IDA manual page, the moment you've all been waiting for β¨
NAME
ida β image viewing and editing program πΌοΈ
SYNOPSIS
ida [options] file ...
DESCRIPTION
so like, ida is this small and fast little app for viewing images πΈ and it's got some basic editing functions too, we love a multi-hyphenate π
you can drop any number of image files as arguments on the command line, no cap. orrrr you can read a single image from stdin by specifying - as the only argument β and yes, xwd | ida - works nice for screenshots, iconic behavior honestly πΈ
OPTIONS
ida understands the usual toolkit options (-geometry + friends, you know the vibe). Additional options are:
-helpβ print a short help text π«Ά-pcdn β pick size for PhotoCD images (n =1 .. 5, default3).-debugβ enable debug messages. also has the side effect that error messages are displayed onstderronly and not as a message box π
GETTING STARTED
Mouse functions
- left mouse button β creates and edits a selection rectangle βοΈ
- middle button β used to start drag'n'drop operations
- right button β brings up the control window with menus, toolbar and file list π
Keyboard Shortcuts
many keyboard shortcuts used by xv are available in ida too. if you're familiar with xv it should be easy for you to get started with ida β iykyk π
all available keyboard shortcuts are also listed in the menus of the control window. the most important ones are listed below:
SPACEβ next file.BACKSPACEβ previous file.LEFT_ARROW,RIGHT_ARROW,UP_ARROW,DOWN_ARROWβ scrolling (hold theCtrlkey for big steps).+/-β zoom in/out.qβ quit.
Supported image formats
Read: BMP (uncompressed), PhotoCD, PPM, XBM, XPM, XWD, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF. the last four are supported using the usual libraries, i.e. you need to have them installed at compile time π οΈ
Write: JPEG, PNG, PostScript, PPM, TIFF.
Using drag'n'drop
ida is a motif application and thus supports the motif drag'n'drop protocol in both directions π¦ the xdnd protocol is supported too, but only in one direction (receive drops).
ida uses the middle mouse button to start a drag'n'drop operation (as the motif style guide suggests). this works for the main window and the file buttons within the file browser π
motif applications should have absolutely no problems dealing with ida's drag'n'drop support. you can drop images into some netscape 4.x window β it imply works. Mozilla accepts motif drops too β¨
interoperation with gnome / gtk is good. i can drag files from ida to eeyes and visa versa without problems. file drops from gmc into ida work just fine too π
interoperation with KDE is bad. π cut+paste works most of the time, drag'n'drop often doesn't. the X11 selection handling of the Qt toolkit has a few design bugs and sucks. basically the troll guys didn't understand what the TARGETS target is good for and violate the ICCCM specs by ignoring it π
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR
Gerd Hoffmann <gerd@kraxel.org> π«Ά
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2002-2012 Gerd Hoffmann <gerd@kraxel.org>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
ok that's the whole page, thanks for coming to my ted talk π
signing off: this was <b>IDA 2.09</b>, (c) 2001-2012 Gerd Hoffmann, and it lives in section IDA(1) of the manual β periodt π
π¦ where this page comes from
- alpine 3.24: fbida-doc 2.15-r0 Β· GPL-2.0-only
- arch rolling: fbida 2.14-6 Β· GPL2
- fedora 43: fbida-ida 2.14-19.fc41 Β· GPLv2+
- fedora 43: fbida-ida 2.15-1.fc43 Β· GPL-2.0-or-later
- fedora 44: fbida-ida 2.15-1.fc44 Β· GPL-2.0-or-later
- nixos 26.05: fbida 2.15-1
- nixpkgs unstable: fbida 2.15-1
- π girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms