PAMX(1)

💖 PAMX(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the Pamx User Manual, straight out of the General Commands Manual section of your local man installation. she's cute, she's tiny, she's an X window full of pixels. let's go 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

pamx — display Netpbm image in X Window System window

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

pamx
  [-fullscreen] [-install] [-private] [-fit] [-pixmap] [-verbose]
  [-display=x-display] [-title=text] [-foreground=color]
  [-background=color] [-border=color] [-geometry=x-geometry-string]
  [-visual=name] netpbm_file

no cap, all options can be abbreviated to their shortest unique prefix. you may use two hyphens instead of one to designate an option (she's flexible like that 💅). and you may use either white space or an equals sign between an option name and its value. iconique behaviour honestly.

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This program is part of Netpbm(1). periodt.

pamx displays a Netpbm image in an X Window System window. it's like a very simple version of the classic X image viewer xloadimage — the lowkey, no-frills younger sibling. 🫶

If you don't specify the input file netpbm_file, the input is from Standard Input. the input image can be any Netpbm image format. and if the input is a multi-image stream, pamx ignores all but the first image (she's monogamous, she only wants the first pic 💀).

real talk: pamx is not the best choice for general purpose viewing of images, because it is a traditional simple Netpbm building block. it's a genuinely good thing to build into other programs, and it can be super useful for debugging more complex systems — but you can get much more powerful viewers that can display Netpbm images. for example: xloadimage, xli, xzgv, and honestly any web browser. 😌

The program xwud (X Window Undump) is part of the X Window System and performs the same basic display function, though with input in the special X Window Dump format (for which Netpbm has converters).

The initial window is at most 90% of the size of the display — unless your window manager does not correctly handle window size requests, or you've used the -fullscreen option. You may move the image around in the window by dragging with the first mouse button. the cursor will indicate which directions you may drag, if any. 👀 and you may exit the window by typing q or Ctrl+C when the keyboard focus is on the window. slay, easy exit.

ppmsvgalib is a similar program that displays an image on a Linux system without the need for the X Window System.

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🧚 X RESOURCE CLASS 🧚

pamx uses the resource class name Xloadimage for window managers which need this resource set. this is, of course, the same resource class that the conventional viewer program xloadimage uses. she's borrowing the fit, and it works. 💜

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (most notably -quiet, see Common Options), pamx recognizes the following command line options:

• -border=color — this sets the background portion of the window which is not covered by any images to be color.
• -display=display_name — this names the X display in which to put the window. e.g. 0:0.
• -fit — force image to use the default visual and colormap. this is useful if you do not want technicolor effects when the colormap focus is inside the image window, but heads up, it may reduce the quality of the displayed image. 🙈
• -fullscreen — use the entire screen to display the image. main character energy, full screen, no regrets. 🔥
• -geometry=WxH[{+,-}X{+,-}Y — this sets the size and position of the window in which pamx displays the image.

by default, the window size exactly matches the image size, except that if you don't specify -fullscreen, the maximum is 90% of the screen dimensions.

• -install — forcibly install the image's colormap when the window is focused. this violates ICCCM standards and only exists to allow operation with naive window managers. use this option only if your window manager does not install colormaps properly. 🚨
• -pixmap — force the use of a pixmap as backing-store. this is provided for servers where backing-store is broken (such as some versions of the AIXWindows server). it may improve scrolling performance on servers which provide backing-store.
• -private — force pamx to use of a private colormap. by default, pamx allocates colors shared unless there are not enough colors available.
• -verbose — causes pamx to print various information about what it's doing to Standard Error. the girlypop loves to narrate. 💅
• -visual=visual_name — force the use of a specific visual type to display an image. by default, pamx tries to pick the best available image for a particular image type. the available visual types are: DirectColor, TrueColor, PseudoColor, StaticColor, GrayScale, and StaticGray. you may use the shortest unique prefix of these names, and case is not significant.
• -background=color — use color as the background color instead of the default (usually white but this depends on the image type) if you are transferring a monochrome image to a color display.
• -foreground=color — use color as the foreground color instead of black if you are transferring a monochrome image to a color display. you can also use this to invert the foreground and background colors of a monochrome image. ✨
• -title=text — set the title bar title of the window. default is the file name of the input file, or "stdin" if the image is from Standard Input.

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

ppmsvgalib(1), pam(1), pnm(1), xzgv, xwud, xloadimage, xli

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💖 AUTHOR 💖

pamx is by Bryan Henderson, in March 2006, based on xloadimage by Jim Frost, Centerline Software, jimf@centerline.com, 1989-1993.

Jim's code contained the following copyright notice and license:

Copyright 1989, 1993 Jim Frost

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this
software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted
without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in
all copies and that both that copyright notice and this
permission notice appear in supporting documentation.  The author
makes no representations about the suitability of this software
for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without express or
implied warranty.

THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE,
INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS,
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT
OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM
LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

Lots of other people contributed to Xloadimage, and they are listed in the file COPYRIGHT in the source code. 💐

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🌈 HISTORY 🌈

pamx was new in Netpbm 10.34 (May 2006).

pamx is essentially based on the classic X displayer program xloadimage by Jim Frost, 1989. Bryan Henderson stripped it down and adapted it to Netpbm in March 2006.

The following features of xloadimage are left out of pamx, to be more compatible with Netpbm's philosophy of simple building blocks. note that there are other programs in Netpbm that do most of these things:

• zoom in/out
• ability to accept formats other than Netpbm
• image transformations (brightening, clipping, rotating, etc)
• decompressing and other decoding of input
• ability to display on the root window
• slide show

pamx also differs from xloadimage in that it uses Libnetpbm.

There is virtually no code from xloadimage actually in pamx, because Bryan rewrote it all to make it easier to understand. a total glow-up rewrite, we love to see it. 😭👑

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💜 DOCUMENT SOURCE 💜

This manual page was generated by the Netpbm tool makeman from HTML source. The master documentation is at

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

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and that's the whole page bestie!! 🎀 this manual page came to you from the netpbm documentation fam, dated 02 July 2011 — Pamx User Manual(1), General Commands Manual. mwah, ily, go display a picture. 💖✨🦋