In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (most notably -quiet, see Common
Options ), ximtoppm recognizes the following command line option:
You can abbreviate any option to its shortest unique prefix.
--alphaout=alpha-filenameximtoppm creates a PGM file containing the transparency channel values in the input image. If the
input image doesn't contain a transparency channel, the alpha-filename file contains all zero
(transparent) transparency values. If you don't specify --alphaout, ximtoppm does not generate a
transparency file, and if the input image has a transparency channel, ximtoppm simply discards it.
If you specify - as the filename, ximtoppm writes the transparency output to Standard Output and
discards the image.
Actually, an Xim image can contain an arbitrary fourth channel -- it need not be a transparency
channel. ximtoppm extracts any fourth channel it finds as described above; it doesn't matter if
it is a transparency channel or not.
See pamcomp(1) for one way to use the transparency output file.