Takes the specified text, either a single line from the command line or multiple lines from standard input, and renders it into a bitmap.
By default, pbmtext uses a built-in font. You can also specify your own font with the -font flag. The fontfile is a pbm file, created in a very specific way. In your window system of choice, display the following text in the desired (fixed-width) font:
M ",/^_[`jpqy| M
/ !"#$%&'()*+ /
< ,-./01234567 <
> 89:;<=>?@ABC >
@ DEFGHIJKLMNO @
_ PQRSTUVWXYZ[ _
{ \]^_`abcdefg {
} hijklmnopqrs }
~ tuvwxyz{|}~ ~
M ",/^_[`jpqy| M
Do a screen grab or window dump of that text, using for instance
xwd,
xgrabsc,
or
screendump.
Convert the result into a pbm file.
If necessary, use
pnmcut
to remove everything except the text.
Finally, run it through
pnmcrop
to make sure the edges are right up against the text.
pbmtext
can figure out the sizes and spacings from that.