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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The PNM Format</TITLE>
<META NAME="manual_section" CONTENT="5">
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<H1>pnm</H1>
Updated: 03 October 2003
<BR>
<A HREF="#index">Table Of Contents</A>

<H2>NAME</H2>

pnm - Netpbm superformat

<H2 id="description">DESCRIPTION</H2>

<P>The PNM format is just an abstraction of the PBM, PGM, and PPM
formats.  I.e. the name &quot;PNM&quot; refers collectively to
PBM, PGM, and PPM.

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

<P>The more general term &quot;Netpbm format&quot; refers to the PNM
formats plus PAM.

<p>PNM is principally used with <a href="index.html">Netpbm</a>.

<P>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 <a href="index.html">the
description of the netpbm programs</a>.

<P>&quot;pnm&quot; also appears in the names of the most general <a
href="libnetpbm.html">Netpbm library routines</a>, some of which aren't even
related to the PNM format.

<H2 id="seealso">SEE ALSO</H2>
<A HREF="ppm.html">ppm</A>,
<A HREF="pgm.html">pgm</A>,
<A HREF="pbm.html">pbm</A>,
<A HREF="pam.html">pam</A>,
<A HREF="directory.html">programs that process PNM</A>,
<A HREF="libnetpbm.html">libnetpbm</A>


<HR>
<H2 id="index">Table Of Contents</H2>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#description">DESCRIPTION</A>
<LI><A HREF="#seealso">SEE ALSO</A>
</UL>
</BODY>
</HTML>