NAME
    pbmtext - render text into a bitmap

SYNOPSIS
    pbmtext [-font fontfile] [-builtin fontname] [-space pixels] [text]

DESCRIPTION
    Takes the specified text, either a single line from the command line or
    multiple lines from standard input, and renders it into a bitmap.

    In the bitmap, each line of input is a line of output.  Formatting
    characters such  as newline have no effect on the formatting; like any
    unprintable character, they turn into spaces.

    The bitmap is just wide enough for the longest line of text, plus mar-
    gins, and just high enough to contain the lines of text, plus margins.
    The left and right margins are twice the width of the widest character
    in the font; the top and bottom margins are the height of the tallest
    character in the font. But if the text is only one line, all the mar-
    gins are half of this.

OPTIONS
    -font,-builtin
    By default, pbmtext uses a built-in font called bdf (about a 10
    point Times-Roman font). You can use a fixed width font by
    specifying -builtin fixed.

    You can also specify your own font with the -font flag. The
    fontfile is either a BDF file from the X window system or a PBM
    file.

    If the fontfile is a PBM file, it is created in a very specific
    way. In your window system of choice, display the following
    text in the desired (fixed-width) font:

   M ",/^_[`jpqy| M

   / !"#$%&'()*+ /
   < ,-./01234567 <
   > 89:;<=>?@ABC >
   @ DEFGHIJKLMNO @
   _ PQRSTUVWXYZ[ _
   { \]^_`abcdefg {
   } hijklmnopqrs }
   ~ tuvwxyz{|}~  ~

   M ",/^_[`jpqy| M

    Do a screen grab or window dump of that text, using for instance
    xwd, xgrabsc, or screendump. Convert the result into a pbm
    file.  If necessary, use pnmcut to remove everything except the
    text. Finally, run it through pnmcrop to make sure the  edges
    are right up against the text. pbmtext can figure out the sizes
    and spacings from that.

    -space pixels
    Add pixels pixels of space between characters. This is in addi-
    tion to whatever space surrounding characters is built into the
    font, which is usually enough to produce a reasonable string of
    text.

    pixels may be negative to crowd text together, but the author
    has not put much thought or testing into how this works in every
    possible case, so it might cause disastrous results.

USAGE
    Often, you want to place text over another image. One way to do this
    is with ppmlabel. ppmlabel does not give you the font  options that
    pbmtext does, though.

    Another way is to use pbmtext to create an image containing the text,
    then use pnmcomp to overlay the text image onto your base image.  To
    make only the text (and not the entire rectangle containing it) cover
    the base image, you will need to give pnmcomp a mask, via its -alpha
    option. You can just use the text image itself as the mask, as long as
    you also specify the -invert option to pnmcomp.

    If you want to overlay colored text instead of black, just use ppm-
    change to change all black pixels to the color of your choice before
    overlaying the text image. But still use the original black and  white
    image for the alpha mask.

    If you want the text at an angle, use pnmrotate on the text image (and
    alpha mask) before overlaying.

SEE ALSO
   pnmcut(1),pnmcrop(1),pnmcomp(1),ppmchange(1), pnmrotate(1),ppmlabel(1)
    , pbm(5)

AUTHOR
    Copyright (C) 1993 by Jef Poskanzer and George Phillips