PPMQVGA(1)

📦 version 10.0, in ubuntu jammy

💖 PPMQVGA 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about ppmqvga — straight out of the General Commands Manual, section 1. it's the little quantizer that could, and honestly? it eats. ✨

🎀 NAME 🎀

ppmqvga — 8 plane quantization

like. that's it. that's the whole job. and it does it gorgeously. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ppmqvga [ options ] [ input file ]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea: ppmqvga takes your PPM files and quantizes them down to 8 planes. and if you want, it'll throw in some Floyd-Steinberg dithering on top, which is the glow-up your gradients have been begging for. 😌

where does the input come from? two options, pick your fighter:

  • a PPM file from the file you name on the command line, or
  • standard input if you don't hand it a file at all.

pipes? yes bestie. we love pipes here. 🫶

✨ Options ✨

  • -d — dither. applies Floyd-Steinberg dithering to the data. this is the one that makes it look fancy. 🌈
  • -q — quiet. no progress reporting, no terminal output whatsoever... unless an error happens, in which case it will absolutely speak up. not me being silent and then screaming. 😭
  • -v — verbose. gives you extra output: how many colors were found, plus some info about the resulting mapping. you can repeat it to generate loads of internal table output, but fr fr, once is generally the useful amount. the second -v is for the girlies who want to see the raw tables and nothing else. 💀

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

dither it and pipe it into a GIF, iconic behavior:

ppmqvga -d my_image.ppm | ppmtogif >my_image.gif

rescue a TGA and turn it into a TIFF, main character pipeline energy:

tgatoppm zombie.tga | ppmqvga | ppmtotif > zombie.tif

see how ppmqvga just slides into the middle of a pipeline like it owns the place? because it does. 👑

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

ppmquant

(your other quantizer bestie. go say hi.) 🍓

🔥 DIAGNOSTICS 🔥

error messages if there are problems, plus various levels of optional progress reporting. so like... it will tell you things. how much it tells you is between you and your flags. 🙈

🌸 LIMITATIONS 🌸

none known.

periodt. no known limitations. flawless. no notes. 💅✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

  • original by Lyle Rains (lrains@netcom.com) as ppmq256 and ppmq256fs
  • combined, documented, and enhanced by Bill Davidsen (davidsen@crd.ge.com)

two legends, one manpage. we stan. 🫶

Copyright 1991,1992 by Bill Davidsen, all rights reserved. The program and documentation may be freely distributed by anyone in source or binary format. Please clearly note any changes.

so yes bestie, share it, fork it, ship it in source or binary — just clearly note any changes you make, okay? be a good citizen. 🎀

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this came from the local manual set — PPMQVGA(1), section 1, General Commands Manual. no cap, that's genuinely all of it. now go quantize something. mwah. 💖✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from