OPTIONS¶
dvisvgm provides a POSIX-compliant command-line interface with
short and long option names. They may be given before and/or after the name
of the file to be converted. Also, the order of specifying the options is
not significant, i.e. you can add them in any order without changing
dvisvgm’s behavior. Certain options accept or require additional
parameters which are directly appended to or separated by whitespace from a
short option (e.g. -v0 or -v 0). Long options require an
additional equals sign (=) between option name and argument but
without any surrounding whitespace (e.g. --verbosity=0). Multiple
short options that don’t expect a further parameter can be combined
after a single dash (e.g. -ejs rather than -e -j -s).
-b, --bbox=fmt
Sets the bounding box of the generated graphic to the
specified format. The 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
An, Bn, Cn, Dn, where
n is a non-negative integer, e.g. A4 or a4 for DIN/ISO A4 format (210mm
× 297mm).
North American paper sizes
invoice, executive, legal, letter, ledger
Special bounding box sizes
| dvi |
page size stored in the DVI file |
| min |
computes the minimal/tightest bounding
box |
| none |
no bounding box is assigned |
| papersize |
box sizes specified by papersize
specials present in the DVI file |
| preview |
bounding box data computed by the preview
package (if present in the DVI file) |
Page orientation
The default page orientation for DIN/ISO and American
paper sizes is
portrait, i.e.
width <
height.
Appending
-landscape or simply
-l to the format string switches
to
landscape mode (
width >
height). For symmetry
reasons you can also explicitly add
-portrait or
-p to indicate
the default portrait format. Note that these suffixes are part of the size
string and not separate options. Thus, they must directly follow the size
specifier without additional blanks. Furthermore, the orientation suffixes
can’t be used with
dvi,
min, and
none.
Note
Option
-b, --bbox only affects the bounding box and does not transform
the page content. Hence, if you choose a landscape format, the page
won’t be rotated.
-C, --cache[=dir]
To speed up the conversion process of bitmap fonts,
dvisvgm saves intermediate conversion information in cache files. By default,
these files are stored in $HOME/.dvisvgm/cache. If you prefer a
different location, use option --cache to overwrite the default.
Furthermore, it is also possible to disable the font caching mechanism
completely with option --cache=none. If argument dir is omitted,
dvisvgm prints the path of the default cache directory together with further
information about the stored fonts. Additionally, outdated and corrupted cache
files are removed.
-j, --clipjoin
This option tells dvisvgm to compute all intersections of
clipping paths itself rather than delegating this task to the SVG renderer.
The resulting SVG files are more portable because some SVG viewers
don’t support intersecting clipping paths which are defined by
clipPath elements containing a clip-path attribute.
--color
Enables colorization of messages printed during the
conversion process. The colors can be customized via environment variable
DVISVGM_COLORS. See the Environment section below for further
information.
--colornames
By default, dvisvgm exclusively uses RGB values of the
form #RRGGBB or #RGB to represent colors in the SVG file. The
latter is a short form for colors whose RGB components each consist of two
identical hex digits, e.g. #123 equals #112233. According to the
SVG standard, it’s also possible to use color names (like black
and darkblue) for a limited number of predefined colors. In order to
apply these color names rather than their RGB values, call dvisvgm with option
--colornames. All colors without an SVG color name will still be
represented by RGB values.
--comments
Adds comments with further information about selected
data to the SVG file. Currently, only font elements and font CSS rules related
to native fonts are annotated.
-E, --eps
If this option is given, dvisvgm does not expect a DVI
but an EPS input file, and tries to convert it to SVG. In order to do so, a
single psfile special command is created and forwarded to the
PostScript special handler. This option is only available if dvisvgm was built
with PostScript support enabled, and requires Ghostscript to be available. See
option --libgs for further information.
-e, --exact
This option tells dvisvgm to compute the precise bounding
box of each character. By default, the values stored in a font’s TFM
file are used to determine a glyph’s extent. As these values are
intended to implement optimal character placements and are not designed to
represent the exact dimensions, they don’t necessarily correspond with
the bounds of the visual glyphs. Thus, width and/or height of some glyphs may
be larger (or smaller) than the respective TFM values. As a result, this can
lead to clipped characters at the bounds of the SVG graphics. With option
--exact given, dvisvgm analyzes the actual shape of each character and
derives a usually tight bounding box.
-f, --font-format=format
Selects the file format used to embed the font data into
the SVG files. 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
--font-format=woff,ah.
Option --font-format is only available if dvisvgm was built
with WOFF support enabled.
-m, --fontmap=filenames
Loads and evaluates a single font map file or a sequence
of font map files. These files are required to resolve font file names and
encodings. dvisvgm does not provide its own map files but tries to read
available ones coming with dvips or dvipdfm. If option
--fontmap is
omitted, dvisvgm looks for the default map files
ps2pk.map,
pdftex.map,
dvipdfm.map, and
psfonts.map (in this order).
Otherwise, the files as option arguments are evaluated in the given order.
Multiple filenames must be separated by commas without leading and/or trailing
whitespace. 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
Only those entries in the given map file that
don’t redefine a font mapping are applied, i.e. fonts already mapped
keep untouched. That’s also the default mode if no mode specifier is
given.
-mapfile
Ensures that none of the font mappings defined in the
given map file are used, i.e. previously defined mappings for the specified
fonts are removed.
=mapfile
All mappings defined in the map file are applied.
Previously defined settings for the same fonts are replaced.
If the first filename in the filename sequence is preceded by a
mode specifier, dvisvgm loads the default font map (see above) and applies
the other map files afterwards. Otherwise, none of default map files will be
loaded automatically.
Examples: --fontmap=myfile1.map,+myfile2.map loads
myfile1.map followed by myfile2.map where all redefinitions of
myfile2.map are ignored. --fontmap==myfile1.map,-myfile2.map
loads the default map file followed by myfile1.map and
myfile2.map where all redefinitions of myfile1.map replace
previous entries. Afterwards, all definitions for the fonts given in
myfile2.map are removed from the font map tree.
For further information about the map file formats and the mode
specifiers, see the manuals of dvips and dvipdfm.
--grad-overlap
Tells dvisvgm to create overlapping grid segments when
approximating color gradient fills (also see option --grad-segments
below). By default, adjacent segments don’t overlap but only touch each
other like separate tiles. However, this alignment can lead to visible gaps
between the segments because the background color usually influences the color
at the boundary of the segments if the SVG renderer uses anti-aliasing to
create smooth contours. One way to avoid this and to create seamlessly
touching color regions is to enlarge the segments so that they extent into the
area of their right and bottom neighbors. Since the latter are drawn on top of
the overlapping parts, the visible size of all segments keeps unchanged. Just
the former gaps disappear as the background is now completely covered by the
correct colors. Currently, dvisvgm computes the overlapping segments
separately for each patch of the mesh (a patch mesh may consist of multiple
patches of the same type). Therefore, there still might be visible gaps at the
seam of two adjacent patches.
--grad-segments=number
Determines the maximal number of segments per column and
row used to approximate gradient color fills. Since SVG 1.1 only supports a
small subset of the shading algorithms available in PostScript, dvisvgm
approximates some of them by subdividing the area to be filled into smaller,
monochromatic segments. Each of these segments gets the average color of the
region it covers. Thus, increasing the number of segments leads to smaller
monochromatic areas and therefore a better approximation of the actual color
gradient. As a drawback, more segments imply bigger SVG files because every
segment is represented by a separate path element.
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.
--grad-simplify=delta
If the size of the segments created to approximate
gradient color fills falls below the given delta value, dvisvgm reduces their
level of detail. For example, Bézier curves are replaced by straight
lines, and triangular segments are combined to tetragons. For a small
delta, these simplifications are usually not noticeable but reduce the
size of the generated SVG files significantly.
-h, --help[=mode]
Prints a short summary of all available command-line
options. The optional mode parameter is an integer value between 0 and
2. It selects the display variant of the help text. Mode 0 lists all options
divided into categories with section headers. This is also the default if
dvisvgm is called without parameters. Mode 1 lists all options ordered by the
short option names, while mode 2 sorts the lines by the long option
names.
--keep
Disables the removal of temporary files as created by
Metafont (usually .gf, .tfm, and .log files) or the TrueType/WOFF
module.
--libgs=filename
This option is only available if the Ghostscript library
is not directly linked to dvisvgm and if PostScript support was not completely
disabled during compilation. In this case, dvisvgm tries to load the shared GS
library dynamically during runtime. By default, it expects the
library’s name to be libgs.so.X (on Unix-like systems, where
X is the ABI version of the library) or
gsdll32.dll/gsdll64.dll (Windows). Option --libgs can be
used to give a different name. Alternatively, it’s also possible to set
the GS library name by the environment variable LIBGS. The latter has
less precedence than the command-line option, i.e. dvisvgm ignores variable
LIBGS if --libgs is given.
-L, --linkmark=style
Selects the method how to mark hyperlinked areas. The
style argument can take one of the values
none,
box, and
line, where
box is the default, i.e. a rectangle is drawn around
the linked region if option
--linkmark is omitted. Style argument
line just draws the lower edge of the bounding rectangle, and
none tells dvisvgm not to add any visible objects to hyperlinks. The
lines and boxes get the current text color selected. In order to apply a
different, constant color, a colon followed by a color specifier can be
appended to the style string. A
color specifier is either a hexadecimal
RGB value of the form
#RRGGBB, or a dvips color name
(
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Colors#The_68_standard_colors_known_to_dvips).
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.
-l, --list-specials
Prints a list of registered special handlers and exits.
Each handler processes a set of special statements belonging to the same
category. In most cases, the categories are identified by the prefix of the
special statements. It’s usually a leading string followed by a colon
or a blank, e.g. color or ps. The listed handler names, however,
don’t need to match these prefixes, e.g. if there is no common prefix
or if functionality is split into separate handlers in order to allow to
disable them separately with option --no-specials. All special
statements not covered by one of the special handlers are silently
ignored.
-M, --mag=factor
Sets the magnification factor applied in conjunction with
Metafont calls prior tracing the glyphs. The larger this value, the better the
tracing results. Nevertheless, large magnification values can cause Metafont
arithmetic errors due to number overflows. So, use this option with care. The
default setting usually produces nice results.
--no-merge
Puts every single character in a separate text
element with corresponding x and y attributes. By default, new
text or tspan elements are only created if a string starts at a
location that differs from the regular position defined by the characters'
advance values.
--no-mktexmf
Suppresses the generation of missing font files. If
dvisvgm can’t find a font file through the kpathsea lookup mechanism,
it calls the external tools mktextfm or mktexmf. This option
disables these calls.
-n, --no-fonts[=variant]
If this option is given, dvisvgm doesn’t create
SVG font elements but uses paths instead. The resulting SVG
files tend to be larger but they are concurrently more compatible with most
applications that don’t support SVG fonts yet. The optional argument
variant selects the method how to substitute fonts by paths. Variant 0
creates path and use elements in order to avoid lengthy
duplicates. Variant 1 creates path elements only. Option
--no-fonts implies --no-styles.
-c, --scale=sx[,sy]
Scales the page content horizontally by sx and
vertically by sy. This option is equivalent to
-TSsx,sy.
-S, --no-specials[=names]
Disable processing of special commands embedded in the
DVI file. If no further parameter is given, all specials are ignored. To
disable a selected set of specials, an optional comma-separated list of names
can be appended to this option. A name is the unique identifier
referencing the intended special handler as listed by option
--list-specials.
--no-styles
By default, dvisvgm creates CSS styles and class
attributes to reference fonts. This variant is more compact than adding the
complete font information to each text element over and over again. However,
if you prefer direct font references, the default behavior can be disabled
with option --no-styles.
-o, --output=pattern
Sets the pattern specifying the names of the generated
SVG files. Parameter
pattern is a string that may contain static
character sequences as well as the variables
%f,
%p,
%P,
%hd,
%ho, and
%hc.
%f expands to the base name of
the DVI file, i.e. the filename without suffix,
%p is the current page
number, and
%P the total number of pages in the DVI file. An optional
number (0-9) given directly after the percent sign specifies the minimal
number of digits to be written. 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 a 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, it’s 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.
-p, --page=ranges
This option selects the pages to be processed. Parameter
ranges consists of a comma-separated list of single page numbers and/or
page ranges. A page range is a pair of numbers separated by a hyphen, e.g.
5-12. Thus, a page sequence might look like this: 2-4,6,9-12,15. It
doesn’t matter if a page is given more than once or if page ranges
overlap. dvisvgm always extracts the page numbers in ascending order and
converts them only once. 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.
-H, --page-hashes[=params]
If this option is given, dvisvgm computes hash values of
all pages to be processed. As long as the page contents don’t change,
the hash value of that page stays the same. This property can be used to
determine whether a DVI page must be converted again or can be skipped in
consecutive runs of dvisvgm. This is done by propagating the hash value to
variable
%hd which can be accessed in the output pattern (see option
--output). By default, dvisvgm changes the output pattern to
%f-%hd if option
--page-hashes is given. As a result, all SVG
file names contain the hash value instead of the page number. When calling
dvisvgm again with option
--page-hashes with the same output pattern,
it checks the existence of the SVG file to be created and skips the conversion
if it’s already present. This also applies for consecutive calls of
dvisvgm with different command-line parameters. If you want to force another
conversion of a DVI file that hasn’t changed, you must remove the
corresponding SVG files beforehand or add the parameter
replace (see
below). If you manually set the output pattern to not contain a hash value,
the conversion won’t be skipped.
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 XXH64 hash algorithm to compute the
values provided through %hd and %hc. It’s extremely
fast, and a 64-bit hash 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.
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.
-P, --pdf
If this option is given, dvisvgm does not expect a DVI
but a PDF input file, and tries to convert it to SVG. Similar to the
conversion of DVI files, only the first page is processed by default. Option
--page can be used to select different pages, page ranges, and/or page
sequences. The conversion is realized by creating a single pdffile
special command which is forwarded to the 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.
-d, --precision=digits
Specifies the maximal number of decimal places applied to
floating-point attribute values. All attribute values written to the generated
SVG file(s) are rounded accordingly. The parameter digits accepts
integer values from 0 to 6, where 0 enables the automatic selection of
significant decimal places. This is also the default value if dvisvgm is
called without option --precision.
--progress[=delay]
Enables a simple progress indicator shown when
time-consuming operations like PostScript specials are processed. The
indicator doesn’t appear before the given delay (in seconds) has
elapsed. The default delay value is 0.5 seconds.
-r, --rotate=angle
Rotates the page content clockwise by angle
degrees around the page center. This option is equivalent to
-TRangle.
-R, --relative
SVG allows to define graphics paths by a sequence of
absolute and/or relative path commands, i.e. each command expects either
absolute coordinates or coordinates relative to the current drawing position.
By default, dvisvgm creates paths made up of absolute commands. If option
--relative is given, relative commands are created instead. This
slightly reduces the size of the SVG files in most cases.
--stdin
Tells dvisvgm to read the DVI or EPS input data from
stdin instead from a file. Alternatively to option --stdin, a
single dash (-) can be given. The default name of the generated SVG file is
stdin.svg which can be changed with option --output.
-s, --stdout
Don’t write the SVG output to a file but redirect
it to stdout.
--tmpdir[=path]
In some cases, dvisvgm needs to create temporary files to
work properly. These files go to the system’s temporary folder by
default, e.g.
/tmp on Linux systems. Option
--tmpdir allows to
specify a different location if necessary for some reason. Please note that
dvisvgm does not create this folder, so you must ensure that it actually
exists before running dvisvgm.
If the optional parameter path is omitted, dvisvgm prints
the location of the system’s temp folder and exits.
-a, --trace-all=[retrace]
This option forces dvisvgm to vectorize not only the
glyphs actually required to render the SVG file correctly – which is
the default –, but processes all glyphs of all fonts referenced in the
DVI file. Because dvisvgm stores the tracing results in a font cache, all
following conversions of these fonts will speed up significantly. The boolean
option
retrace determines how to handle glyphs already stored in the
cache. By default, these glyphs are skipped. Setting argument
retrace
to
yes or
true forces dvisvgm to retrace the corresponding
bitmaps again.
Note
This option only takes effect if font caching is active. Therefore,
--trace-all cannot be combined with option
--cache=none.
-T, --transform=commands
Applies a sequence of transformations to the SVG content.
Each transformation is described by a
command beginning with a capital
letter followed by a list of comma-separated parameters. Following
transformation commands are supported:
T tx[,ty]
Translates (moves/shifts) the page in direction of vector
(tx,ty). If ty is omitted, ty=0 is assumed. The
expected unit length of tx and ty are TeX points (1pt =
1/72.27in). However, there are several constants defined to simplify the unit
conversion (see below).
S sx[,sy]
Scales the page horizontally by sx and vertically
by sy. If sy is omitted, sy=sx is assumed.
R angle[,x,y]
Rotates the page clockwise by angle degrees around
point (x,y). If the optional arguments x and y are
omitted, the page will be rotated around its center depending on the chosen
page format. When option -bnone is given, the rotation center is origin
(0,0).
KX angle
Skews the page along the x-axis by angle
degrees. Argument angle can take any value except 90+180k, where
k is an integer.
KY angle
Skews the page along the y-axis by angle
degrees. Argument angle can take any value except 90+180k, where
k is an integer.
FH [y]
Mirrors (flips) the page at the horizontal line through
point (0,y). Omitting the optional argument leads to
y=h/2, where h denotes the page height (see
pre-defined constants below).
FV [x]
Mirrors (flips) the page at the vertical line through
point (x,0). Omitting the optional argument leads to
x=w/2, where w denotes the page width (see pre-defined
constants below).
M m1,...,m6
Applies a transformation described by the 3×3
matrix
((
m1,
m2,
m3),(
m4,
m5,
m6),(0,0,1)),
where the inner triples denote the rows.
Note
All transformation commands of option
-T, --transform are applied in the
order of their appearance. Multiple commands can optionally be separated by
spaces. In this case the whole transformation string has to be enclosed in
double quotes to keep them together. All parameters are expressions of
floating point type. You can either give plain numbers or arithmetic terms
combined by the operators
+ (addition),
- (subtraction),
* (multiplication),
/ (division) or
% (modulo) with
common associativity and precedence rules. Parentheses may be used as well.
Additionally, some pre-defined constants are provided:
| ux |
horizontal position of upper left page
corner in TeX point units |
| uy |
vertical position of upper left page corner
in TeX point units |
| h |
page height in TeX point units (0 in case
of -bnone) |
| w |
page width in TeX point units (0 in case of
-bnone) |
Furthermore, you can use the 9 length constants pt,
bp, cm, mm, in, pc, dd, cc,
and sp, e.g. 2cm or 1.6in. Thus, option
-TT1in,0R45 moves the page content 1 inch to the right and rotates it
by 45 degrees around the page center afterwards.
For single transformations, there are also the short-hand options
-c, -t and -r available. In contrast to the
--transform commands, the order of these options is not significant,
so that it’s not possible to describe transformation sequences with
them.
-t, --translate=tx[,ty]
Translates (moves) the page content in direction of
vector (tx,ty). This option is equivalent to
-TTtx,ty.
-v, --verbosity=level
Controls the type of messages printed during a dvisvgm
run:
| 0 |
no message output at all |
| 1 |
error messages only |
| 2 |
warning messages only |
| 4 |
informational messages only |
Note
By adding these values you can combine the categories. The default level is 7,
i.e. all messages are printed.
-V, --version[=extended]
Prints the version of dvisvgm and exits. If the optional
argument is set to yes, the version numbers of the linked libraries are
printed as well.
-z, --zip[=level]
Creates a compressed SVG file with suffix .svgz. The
optional argument specifies the compression level. Valid values are in the
range of 1 to 9 (default value is 9). Larger values cause better compression
results but may take slightly more computation time.
-Z, --zoom=factor
Multiplies the values of the width and
height attributes of the SVG root element by argument factor
while the coordinate system of the graphic content is retained. As a result,
most SVG viewers zoom the graphics accordingly. If a negative zoom factor is
given, the width and height attributes are omitted.
SUPPORTED SPECIALS¶
dvisvgm supports several sets of special commands that can
be used to enrich DVI files with additional features, like color, graphics,
and hyperlinks. The evaluation of special commands is delegated to dedicated
handlers provided by dvisvgm. Each handler is responsible for all special
statements of the same command set, i.e. commands beginning with the same
prefix. To get a list of the actually provided special handlers, use option
--list-specials (see above). This section gives an overview of the
special commands currently supported.
bgcolor
Special statement for changing the background/page color.
Since SVG 1.1 doesn’t support background colors, dvisvgm inserts a
rectangle of the chosen color into the generated SVG document. This rectangle
always gets the same size as the selected or computed bounding box. This
background color command is part of the color special set but is handled
separately in order to let the user turn it off. For an overview of the
command syntax, see the documentation of dvips, for instance.
color
Statements of this command set provide instructions to
change the text/paint color. For an overview of the exact syntax, see the
documentation of dvips, for instance.
dvisvgm
dvisvgm offers its own small set of specials. The
following list gives a brief overview.
dvisvgm:raw text
Adds an arbitrary sequence of characters to the page
section of the SVG document. dvisvgm does not perform any validation here,
thus the user has to ensure that the resulting SVG is still valid. Parameter
text may contain the expressions {?x}, {?y}, and
{?color} that expand to the current x or y coordinate and
the current color, respectively. Furthermore, {?nl} expands to a
newline character.
dvisvgm:rawdef text
This command is similar to dvisvgm:raw, but puts
the raw text into the <defs> section of the SVG document currently being
generated.
dvisvgm:rawset name ... dvisvgm:endrawset
This pair of specials marks the begin and end of a
definition of a named raw SVG fragment. All dvisvgm:raw and
dvisvgm:rawdef specials enclosed by dvisvgm:rawset and
dvisvgm:endrawset are not evaluated immediately but jointly stored
under the given name for later use. Once defined, the named fragment
can be referenced throughout the DVI file by dvisvgm:rawput (see
below). The two commands dvisvgm:rawset and dvisvgm:endrawset
must not be nested, i.e. each call of dvisvgm:rawset has to be followed
by a corresponding call of dvisvgm:endrawset before another
dvisvgm:rawset may occur. Also, the identifier name must be
unique throughout the DVI file. Using dvisvgm:rawset multiple times
together with the same name leads to warning messages.
dvisvgm:rawput name
Inserts raw SVG fragments previously stored under the
given name. dvisvgm distinguishes between fragments that were specified
with dvisvgm:raw or dvisvgm:rawdef, and handles them
differently: It inserts all dvisvgm:raw parts every time
dvisvgm:rawput is called, whereas the dvisvgm:rawdef portions go
to the <defs> section of the current SVG document only once.
dvisvgm:img width height file
Creates an image element at the current graphic position
referencing the given file. JPEG, PNG, and SVG images can be used here.
However, dvisvgm does not check the file format or the file name suffix. The
lengths width and height can be given together with a unit
specifier (see option --bbox) or as plain floating point numbers. In
the latter case, TeX point units are assumed (1in = 72.27pt).
dvisvgm:bbox n[ew] name
Defines or resets a local bounding box called
name. The name may consist of letters and digits. While processing a
DVI page, dvisvgm continuously updates the (global) bounding box of the
current page in order to determine the minimal rectangle containing all
visible page components (characters, images, drawing elements etc.)
Additionally to the global bounding box, the user can request an arbitrary
number of named local bounding boxes. Once defined, these boxes are updated
together with the global bounding box starting with the first character that
follows the definition. Thus, the local boxes can be used to compute the
extent of parts of the page. This is useful for scenarios where the generated
SVG file is post-processed. In conjunction with special dvisvgm:raw,
the macro {?bbox name} expands to the four values
x, y, w, and h (separated by spaces) specifying
the coordinates of the upper left corner, width, and height of the local box
name. If box name wasn’t previously defined, all four
values equal to zero.
dvisvgm:bbox width height [depth]
Updates the bounding box of the current page by embedding
a virtual rectangle (x, y, width, height) where
the lower left corner is located at the current DVI drawing position
(x,y). If the optional parameter depth is specified,
dvisvgm embeds a second rectangle (x, y, width,
-depth). The lengths width, height, and depth can
be given together with a unit specifier (see option --bbox) or as plain
floating point numbers. In the latter case, TeX point units are assumed (1in =
72.27pt). Depending on size and position of the virtual rectangle, this
command either enlarges the overall bounding box or leaves it as is.
It’s not possible to reduce its extent. This special should be used
together with dvisvgm:raw in order to update the viewport of the page
properly.
dvisvgm:bbox a[bs] x1 y1 x2
y2
This variant of the bbox special updates the bounding box
by embedding a virtual rectangle (x1,y1,x2,y2).
The points (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) denote the absolute
coordinates of two diagonal corners of the rectangle.
dvisvgm:bbox f[ix] x1 y1 x2
y2
This variant of the bbox special assigns an absolute
(final) bounding box to the resulting SVG. After executing this command,
dvisvgm doesn’t further alter the bounding box coordinates, except this
special is called again later. The points (
x1,
y1) and
(
x2,
y2) denote the absolute coordinates of two diagonal corners
of the rectangle.
The following TeX snippet adds two raw SVG elements to the output
and updates the bounding box accordingly:
\special{dvisvgm:raw <circle cx='{?x}' cy='{?y}' r='10' stroke='black' fill='red'/>}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox 10bp 10bp 10bp}%
\special{dvisvgm:bbox -10bp 10bp 10bp}
\special{dvisvgm:raw <path d='M50 200 L10 250 H100 Z' stroke='black' fill='blue'/>}
\special{dvisvgm:bbox abs 10bp 200bp 100bp 250bp}
em
These specials were introduced with the
emTeX
distribution by Eberhard Mattes. They provide line drawing statements,
instructions for embedding MSP, PCX, and BMP image files, as well as two PCL
commands. dvisvgm supports only the line drawing statements and ignores all
other em specials silently. A description of the command syntax can be found
in the DVI driver documentation coming with emTeX
(
https://ctan.org/pkg/emtex).
html
The hyperref specification defines several variants on
how to mark hyperlinked areas in a DVI file. dvisvgm supports the plain
HyperTeX special constructs as created with hyperref package option
hypertex. By default, all linked areas of the document are marked by a
rectangle. Option
--linkmark allows to change this behavior. See above
for further details. Information on syntax and semantics of the HyperTeX
specials can be found in the hyperref manual
(
https://ctan.org/pkg/hyperref).
papersize
The papersize special, which is an extension
introduced by dvips, can be used to specify the widths and heights of the
pages in the DVI file. It affects the page it appears on as well as all
following pages until another papersize special is found. If there is more
than one papersize special present on a page, dvisvgm applies the last one.
However, in order to stay compatible with previous versions of dvisvgm that
did not evaluate these specials, their processing must be explicitly enabled
by adding option --bbox=papersize on the command-line. Otherwise,
dvisvgm ignores them and computes tight bounding boxes.
pdf
pdfTeX and dvipdfmx introduced several special commands
related to the generation of PDF files. Currently, only
pdf:mapfile,
pdf:mapline,
pdf:pagesize, and PDF hyperlink specials are
supported by dvisvgm. The latter are the PDF pendants to the HTML HyperTeX
specials generated by the hyperref package in PDF mode.
pdf:pagesize is similar to the papersize special
(see above) which specifies the size of the current and all folowing 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).
ps
The famous DVI driver
dvips introduced its own set
of specials in order to embed PostScript code into DVI files, which greatly
improves the capabilities of DVI documents. One aim of dvisvgm is to
completely evaluate all PostScript snippets and to convert as many of them as
possible to SVG. In contrast to dvips, dvisvgm uses floating point arithmetics
to compute the precise position of each graphic element, i.e. it
doesn’t round the coordinates. Therefore, the relative locations of the
graphic elements may slightly differ from those computed by dvips.
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.
tpic
The TPIC special set defines instructions for drawing
simple geometric objects. Some LaTeX packages, like eepic and tplot, use these
specials to describe graphics.
