pnm

The PNM Format(5) File Formats Manual The PNM Format(5)

NAME

   pnm - Netpbm superformat

DESCRIPTION

   The PNM format is just an abstraction of the PBM, PGM, and PPM formats.  I.e. the name "PNM" refers collectively to PBM, PGM, and PPM.

   The name "PNM" is an acronym derived from "Portable Any Map." This derivation makes more sense if you consider it in the context of the other Netpbm format names: PBM, PGM, and PPM.

   The more general term "Netpbm format" refers to the PNM formats plus PAM.

   PNM is principally used with Netpbm(1).

   Note that besides being names of formats, PBM, PGM, PPM, and PNM are also classes of programs.  A PNM program can take PBM, PGM, or PPM input.  That's nothing special -- a PPM program
   can too.  But a PNM program can often produce multiple output formats as well, and a PNM program can see the difference between PBM, PGM, and PPM input and respond to each differently
   whereas a PPM program sees everything as if it were PPM.  This is discussed more in the description of the netpbm programs" (1).

   "pnm" also appears in the names of the most general Netpbm library routines(1), some of which aren't even related to the PNM format.

INTERNET MEDIA TYPE

   No Internet Media Type (aka MIME type, content type) for PNM has been registered with the IANA, but the value image/x-portable-anymap is conventional.

   Note  that  there  are also conventional Internet Media Types for each of the PNM subformats.  The recommended practice is to use those in preference to the PNM code when it is conve
   nient to do so.

FILE NAME

   There are no requirements on the name of a PNM file, but the convention is to use the suffix "pbm", "pgm", or "ppm", depending on the particular subformat, or "pnm" if it is not  con
   venient to distinguish the subformats.

SEE ALSO

   ppm(1), pgm(1), pbm(1), pam(1), programs that process PNM(1), libnetpbm(1)

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/pnm.html

netpbm documentation 27 November 2013 The PNM Format(5)