xcfinfo(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

xcfinfo — displays info about GIMP xcf files, periodt 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xcfinfo [ options ] filename

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so bestie, xcfinfo is literally a command-line tool that spills the tea about what's inside image files in the XCF format — you know, the one gimp(1) uses 🎨 — and it's especially obsessed with telling you about the layers in the image. like, that's its whole main character energy.

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, --help — prints an option summary to standard output and then exits with a return code of 0. cute and simple 🫶
• -j, --bzip — same thing as -Z bzcat. it's the default when the filename ends with bz2 ✨
• -u, --utf8 — uses the raw UTF-8 representation straight from the XCF file when comparing and displaying layer names. normally those layer names get converted to the character set of your current locale, so this is for when you want the unfiltered version, no cap 💜
• -v, --verbose — prints progress messages about the conversion to standard error. like a little running commentary 🗣️
• -V, --version — prints the version number of xcftools to standard output and exits with a return code of 0 👑
• -z, --gzip — same thing as -Z zcat. default when the filename ends with gz 🌈
• -Z command, --unpack command — you give it a command that the input file gets filtered through before it's interpreted as an XCF file. the command is invoked as command filename and it must produce output on its standard output. heads up though — it is not possible to specify arguments as part of command 🙈. an uncompressor gets picked automatically if the filename ends with gz or bz2, and if you wanna suppress that, use -Z cat (which is implemented without actually starting a cat(1) process, sneaky ✨)

🔥 OUTPUT 🔥

information about the image goes to standard output in a fixed format. the very first line is the general tea about the XCF file:

• the file format version
• the canvas size
• the image mode (color, grayscale, or indexed)
• the number of layers
• the internal compression algorithm

after that first line, you get one line per layer, and each one has:

1. the character + if the layer is visible, and - if it's not 👀
2. the size and offset of the layer
3. the pixel format of the layer, including whether or not the layer has an alpha channel
4. the layer mode, plus the opacity if it's not 100%, plus /mask if the layer has an active layer mask
5. the name of the layer 💖

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

the exit status of xcfinfo is:

• 0 — success 🎉
• 20 — problems parsing the command line 😬
• 21 — the specified XCF file does not exist or cannot be read 😭
• 123 — the XCF file contains presumably valid features that xcftools does not support. (as of this writing there is no known way of getting the Gimp to write an XCF file that will provoke this return. please notify the author if you discover one 👀)
• 125 — the XCF file is malformed 💀
• 126 — an uncompression program could not be executed, or terminated abnormally 😵
• 127 — unexpected I/O error, internal errors, or other "this can't happen" situations 🙃

also! if an uncompression program returns an error exit status, that will be returned from xcfinfo too. fr fr.

🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

xcfinfo was written by Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> 🫶

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

xcf2pnm(1), xcf2png(1) — go check 'em out bestie, iykyk 💅

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and that's the whole thing! brought to you by Xcftools, dated 2006-02-12 — slay, iconic, no notes 🌸💖