dvi2bitmap

This page is the distribution point for dvi2bitmap.

The current stable version is 0.13; there is currently no development version.

DOWNLOAD

• The current stable release is dvi2bitmap-0.13, 2005 August 19.
• This is available at the Sourceforge project summary page

There's a low-volume mailing list for dvi2bitmap announcements and, possibly, discussion: dvi2bitmap-users

Documentation

• User documentation in html and pdf
• Library API documentation

Features

dvi2bitmap is a utility to convert TeX DVI files directly to bitmaps, without going through the complicated (and slow!) route of conversion via PostScript and PNM. The prime motivation for this is to prepare mathematical equations for inclusion in HTML files, but there is a broad range of uses beyond that.

• dvi2bitmap is written in portable C++, and the program acts as a wrapper round the libdvi2bitmap library (both static and shareable), which abstracts DVI and PK files and their contents, Bitmaps, and various other objects supporting these. The library has extensive API documentation, and is intended to be useful for other projects.
• It can generate XBM, XPM and GIF bitmaps, plus PNG, if you have the libpng library installed.
• Uses the same kpathsea font-searching library as other TeX programs, again as long as you have the appropriate library installed.
• Can read DVI files from a pipe.
• Internal bitmaps now automatically expandable.
• It's fast
• Documentation improvements, discussing optimal font and parameter choices, and usage of dvi2bitmap as part of a batched workflow (ie, fancy pipe plumbing).
• Builds using automake/libtool. Builds successfully on Linux, MacOS X, Solaris, and Digital Unix (that I know of); it should (?!) be buildable under Cygwin (reports keenly appreciated).
• Released under the GPL
• In this release: Minor bugfixes. The main motivation for this release is that the sources have been transferred to sourceforge.

Notes

• There are font samples to illustrate what dvi2bitmap can do.
• The software is copyright, 1999--2005, Council of the Central Laboratories of the Research Councils, and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence: see the file LICENCE within the distribution.
• dvi2bitmap is also archived in CTAN, at tex-archive/dviware/dvi2bitmap

This package was first released informally back in 1999, after a low-key announcement on comp.text.tex (I think), with a 1.0 version number. That's inappropriate for beta software, so in the first proper release, the version number was dropped to 0.7.