Parameter fmt takes either one of the format specifiers listed below, or a sequence of four comma- or whitespace-separated length values x1, y1, x2 and y2. The latter define the absolute coordinates of two diagonal corners of the bounding box. Each length value consists of a floating point number and an optional length unit (pt, bp, cm, mm, in, pc, dd, cc, or sp). If the unit is omitted, TeX points (pt) are assumed.

It’s also possible to give only one length value l. In this case, the minimal bounding box is computed and enlarged by adding (-l,-l) to the upper left and (l,l) to the lower right corner.

Additionally, dvisvgm also supports the following format specifiers:

International DIN/ISO paper sizes

North American paper sizes

Special bounding box sizes

Page orientation

Since the collection of supported output devices can vary among local Ghostscript installations, not all formats may be available in some environments. dvisvgm quits with a PostScript error message if the selected output format requires a locally unsupported output device.

The two JPEG format specifiers accept an optional parameter to set the IJG quality level which must directly follow the format specifier separated by a colon, e.g. --bitmap-format=jpeg:50. The quality value is an integer between 0 and 100. Higher values result in better image quality but lower compression rates and therefore larger files. The default quality level is 75 which is applied if no quality parameter is given or if it’s set to 0.

The optional argument of --currentcolor specifies the RGB color value to be replaced and must be given as either six or three digit hex color value (https://www.w3.org/TR/css-color/#typedef-hex-color) preceded by character #, e.g. #0000ff or #00f for blue. If the optional argument is omitted, black is assumed.

This option only affects bitmaps referenced in DVI/XDV files, e.g. by \includegraphics or special command dvisvgm:img (see below). Bitmaps present in PostScript or PDF files are always embedded. Also see option bitmap-format.

This option only affects the processing of DVI files. When converting EPS or PDF files, the bounding box information stored in these files are used to derive the SVG bounding box.

Following formats are supported: SVG (that’s the default), TTF (TrueType), WOFF, and WOFF2 (Web Open Font Format version 1 and 2). By default, dvisvgm creates unhinted fonts that might look bad on low-resolution devices. In order to improve the display quality, the generated TrueType, WOFF, or WOFF2 fonts can be autohinted. The autohinter is enabled by appending ,autohint or ,ah to the font format, e.g. --font-format=woff,autohint or --fwoff,ah. This functionality requires the ttfautohint library (https://freetype.org/ttfautohint). If it’s not available or can’t be found, dvisvgm issues a corresponding warning message.

Option --font-format is only available if dvisvgm was built with WOFF support enabled.

By default, redefined mappings do not replace previous ones. However, each filename can be preceded by an optional mode specifier (+, -, or =) to change this behavior:

+mapfile

-mapfile

=mapfile

#include [<modechar>] <filename|filepath>
#includefirst [<modechar>] <filename|filepath>

Currently, dvisvgm supports free- and lattice-form triangular patch meshes as well as Coons and tensor-product patch meshes. They are approximated by subdividing the area of each patch into a n×n grid of smaller segments. The maximal number of segments per column and row can be changed with option --grad-segments.

A values in brackets after the description text indicate the default parameter of the option. They are applied if an option with a mandatory parameter is not used or if an optional parameter is omitted. For example, option --bbox requires a size parameter which defaults to min if --bbox is not used. Option --zip, which isn’t applied by default, accepts an optional compression level parameter. If it’s omitted, the stated default value 9 is used.

Alternatively, it’s also possible to assign the path to environment variable LIBGS, e.g. export LIBGS=/usr/local/lib/libgs.so.9 or set LIBGS=\gs\gs9.25\bin\gsdll63.dll. LIBGS has less precedence than the command-line option, i.e. dvisvgm ignores variable LIBGS if --libgs is given.

Moreover, argument style can take a single color specifier to highlight the linked region by a frameless box filled with that color. An optional second color specifier separated by a colon selects the frame color.

Examples: box:red or box:#ff0000 draws red boxes around the linked areas. yellow:blue creates yellow filled rectangles with blue frames.

The output of option --message is not affected by the specified verbosity level, i.e. it prints the text even with --verbosity=0.

The following list describes the currently available optimizer modules.

list

none

all

collapse-groups

group-attributes

reassign-clippaths

remove-clippaths

simplify-text

simplify-transform

An optional number (0-9) specified directly after the percent sign of a variable holding a numeric value denotes the minimal number of digits to be created. If a particular value consists of less digits, the number is padded with leading zeros. Example: %3p enforces 3 digits for the current page number (001, 002, etc.). Without an explicit width specifier, %p gets the same number of digits as %P.

If you need more control over the numbering, you can use arithmetic expressions as part of the pattern. The syntax is %(expr) where expr may contain additions, subtractions, multiplications, and integer divisions with common precedence. The variables p and P contain the current page number and the total number of pages, respectively. For example, --output="%f-%(p-1)" creates filenames where the numbering starts with 0 rather than 1.

The variables %hX contain different hash values computed from the DVI page data and the options given on the command-line. %hd and %hc are only set if option --page-hashes is present. Otherwise, they are empty. For further information, see the description of option --page-hashes below.

The default pattern is %f-%p.svg if the DVI file consists of more than one page, and %f.svg otherwise. That means, a DVI file foo.dvi is converted to foo.svg if foo.dvi is a single-page document. Otherwise, multiple SVG files foo-01.svg, foo-02.svg, etc. are produced. In Windows environments, the percent sign indicates dereferenced environment variables, and must therefore be protected by a second percent sign, e.g. --output=%%f-%%p.

In order to stay compatible with previous versions, the default page sequence is 1. dvisvgm therefore converts only the first page and not the whole document if option --page is omitted. Usually, page ranges consist of two numbers denoting the first and last page to be converted. If the conversion should start at page 1, or if it should continue up to the last DVI page, the first or second range number can be omitted, respectively. Example: --page=-10 converts all pages up to page 10, --page=10- converts all pages starting with page 10. Please consider that the page values don’t refer to the page numbers printed on the corresponding page. Instead, the physical page count is expected, where the first page always gets number 1.

At the end of the range sequence an optional filter specifier can be added. Currently, the two filters :even and :odd are supported which restrict the preceding values to even or odd numbers. For example, --page=1-11,20:even is equivalent to --page=2,4,6,8,10,20.

Alternatively, the output pattern may contain the variables %ho and %hc. %ho expands to a 32-bit hash representing the given command-line options that affect the generated SVG output, like --no-fonts and --precision. Different combinations of options and parameters lead to different hashes. Thus pattern %f-%hd-%ho creates filenames that change depending on the DVI data and the given command-line options. Variable %hc provides a combined hash computed from the DVI data and the command-line options. It has the same length as %hd.

Since the page number isn’t part of the file name by default, different DVI pages with identical contents get the same file name. Therefore, only the first one is converted while the others are skipped. To create separate files for each page, you can add the page number to the output pattern, e.g. --output="%f-%p-%hc".

By default, dvisvgm uses the fast XXH64 hash algorithm to compute the values provided through %hd and %hc. 64-bit hashes should be sufficient for most documents with an average size of pages. Alternatively, XXH32 and MD5 can be used as well. The desired algorithm is specified by argument params of option --page-hashes. It takes one of the strings MD5, XXH32, and XXH64, where the names can be given in lower case too, like --page-hashes=md5. Since version 0.7.1, xxHash provides an experimental 128-bit hash function whose algorithm has been stabilized as of version 0.8. When using a version prior to 0.8, the 128-bit hash values can vary depending on the used xxHash version. If the corresponding API is available, dvisvgm supports the new hash function, and option --page-hashes additionally accepts the algorithm specifier XXH128.

Finally, option --page-hashes can take a second argument that must be separated by a comma. Currently, only the two parameters list and replace are evaluated, e.g. --page-hashes=md5,list or --page-hashes=replace. When list is present, dvisvgm doesn’t perform any conversion but just lists the hash values %hd and %hc of the pages specified by option --page. Parameter replace forces dvisvgm to convert a DVI page even if a file with the target name already exists.

If a Ghostcript version < 10.01.0 is found, dvisvgm uses Ghostscript to process the PDF file. In this case, the conversion is realized by creating a single pdffile special command which is forwarded to dvisvgm’s PostScript special handler. Therefore, this option is only available if dvisvgm was built with PostScript support enabled, and requires Ghostscript to be accessible. See option --libgs for further information.

As of Ghostscript 10.01.0, this will no longer work due to the introduction of a new PDF interpreter. Therefore, an alternative conversion module based on mutool, a utility which is part of the MuPDF (https://mupdf.com) package, has been introduced. It’s automatically invoked if Ghostscript can’t be used and if a working mutool executable is present in a directory which is part of the system’s search path.

Alternatively, environment variable DVISVGM_PDF_PROC can be used to select the PDF processor. The currently supported values are gs and mutool.

In order to prevent colliding files caused by parallel calls of dvisvgm, the program doesn’t write the files directly in the specified directory but furthermore creates a uniquely named subfolder in there, where the temporary files will be placed. This can be prevented by appending // or \\ (on Windows) to the specified directory name. For example, --tmpdir=.// creates the temporary files directly in the current working directory, while --tmpdir=. places them in a dedicated subfolder of the current working directory.

If the optional parameter path of option --tmpdir is omitted, dvisvgm prints the location of the system’s temp folder and exits.

T tx[,ty]

S sx[,sy]

R angle[,x,y]

KX angle

KY angle

FH [y]

FV [x]

M m1,...,m6

dvisvgm extends the dvips syntax of the color specials by two optional modifiers to enable the differentiation between fill and stroke colors, i.e. colors used to fill enclosed areas and to draw lines, respectively. If one of the color specifiers, like a color name or a color model followed by a sequence of color components, is preceded by fill or stroke, only the corresponding color is changed. Without these modifiers both colors are affected. Example: color push fill rgb 1 0 1 pushes a new color pair onto the color stack whereby the fill color is set to magenta and the stroke color retains its current value. color push rgb 1 0 1 pushes a color pair with both colors set to magenta.

Additionally, the new special color set is introduced. Its syntax is the same as the one of color push including the optional fill and stroke modifiers. Instead of pushing a new color pair it modifies the topmost one on the stack. If the color stack is empty, the default (black) fill/stroke color is changed.

dvisvgm:raw text

dvisvgm:rawdef text

dvisvgm:rawset name ... dvisvgm:endrawset

dvisvgm:rawput name

dvisvgm:img width height file

dvisvgm:bbox lock

dvisvgm:bbox unlock

dvisvgm:bbox n[ew] name

dvisvgm:bbox width height [depth] [transform]

dvisvgm:bbox a[bs] x1 y1 x2 y2 [transform]

dvisvgm:bbox f[ix] x1 y1 x2 y2 [transform]

\special{dvisvgm:raw <circle cx='{?x}' cy='{?y}' r='10' stroke='black' fill='red'/>}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox 10bp 10bp 10bp transform}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox -10bp 10bp 10bp transform}
\special{dvisvgm:raw <path d='M50 200 L10 250 H100 Z' stroke='black' fill='blue'/>}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox abs 10bp 200bp 100bp 250bp transform}

dvisvgm:currentcolor [on|off]

dvisvgm:message msg

pdf:pagesize is similar to the papersize special (see above) which specifies the size of the current and all following pages. In order to actually apply the extents to the generated SVG files, option --bbox=papersize must be given.

pdf:mapfile and pdf:mapline allow for modifying the font map tree while processing the DVI file. They are used by CTeX, for example. dvisvgm supports both, the dvips and dvipdfm font map format. For further information on the command syntax and semantics, see the documentation of \pdfmapfile in the pdfTeX user manual (https://ctan.org/pkg/pdftex).

Since PostScript is a rather complex language, dvisvgm does not implement its own PostScript interpreter but relies on Ghostscript (https://ghostscript.com) instead. If the Ghostscript library was not linked to the dvisvgm binary, it is looked up and loaded dynamically during runtime. In this case, dvisvgm looks for libgs.so.X on Unix-like systems (supported ABI versions: 7,8,9), for libgs.X.dylib on macOS, and for gsdll32.dll or gsdll64.dll on Windows. You can override the default file names with environment variable LIBGS or the command-line option --libgs. The library must be reachable through the ld search path (*nix) or the PATH environment variable (Windows). Alternatively, the absolute file path can be specified. If the library cannot be found, dvisvgm disables the processing of PostScript specials and prints a warning message. Use option --list-specials to check whether PostScript support is available, i.e. entry ps is present.

The PostScript handler also recognizes and evaluates bounding box data generated by the preview package (https://ctan.org/pkg/preview) with option tightpage. If such data is present in the DVI file and if dvisvgm is called with option --bbox=preview, dvisvgm sets the width and total height of the SVG file to the values derived from the preview data. Additionally, it prints a message showing the width, height, and depth of the box in TeX point units to the console. Especially, the depth value can be read by a post-processor to vertically align the SVG graphics with the baseline of surrounding text in HTML or XSL-FO documents, for example. Please note that SVG bounding boxes are defined by a width and (total) height. In contrast to TeX, SVG provides no means to differentiate between height and depth, i.e. the vertical extents above and below the baseline, respectively. Therefore, it is generally not possible to retrieve the depth value from the SVG file itself.

If you call dvisvgm with option --bbox=min (the default) and preview data is present in the DVI file, dvisvgm doesn’t apply the preview extents but computes a bounding box that tightly encloses the page contents. The height, depth and width values written to console are adapted accordingly.