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 convenient 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 convenient  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)