You can abbreviate any option to its shortest unique prefix.
This program is part of Netpbm.
ppmpat produces a PPM of the specified width and height, with a pattern in it.
You could, for example, use it to create wallpaper for a computer screen.
One use of this program is as an example of the Netpbm library drawing functions, which it uses.
Some of the patterns have large numbers of colors, so if you want a simpler pattern, use pnmquant on the output.
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (most notably -quiet, see Common Options), ppmpat recognizes the following command line options:
Specify the pattern type with these options. One pattern type must be specified.
If you specify -color, give two colors: background and foreground, in that order.
If you specify -color, give three colors: background and two foregrounds, in that order.
If you specify -color, give three colors: background and two foregrounds, in that order.
If you specify -color, give three colors: background and two foregrounds, in that order.
(There are many examples of this pattern in nature. One is the hide of a giraffe).
If you specify -color, give two or more colors.
If you specify -color, give three or more colors. The first is the background color.
If you specify -color, give three or more colors. The first is the background color; the others are colors for the leafy foreground shapes. The foreground shapes will probably occupy nearly the entire image, so that the background color is barely visible.
If you specify -color, this is the same as -camo.
If you specify -color, give two colors: background and foreground, in that order.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.78 (March 2017).
If you specify -color, give three colors: background, foreground, and stripe, in that order.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.78 (March 2017).
If you do not specify this option, ppmpat chooses colors at random.
Different patterns take different numbers of colors. Some can involve variable numbers of colors. If you specify a number of colors incompatible with the pattern you specify, ppmpat fails, telling you how many colors to specify.
colorlist is a comma-separated list of colors.
Specify each color as described for the argument of the pnm_parsecolor() library routine.
Example: -color red, green, rgbi:1.0/0.5/.25 .
This option was new in Netpbm 10.78 (March 2017).
This option was new in Netpbm 10.97 (December 2021).
Use this to ensure you get the same image on separate invocations.
By default, ppmpat uses a seed derived from the time of day and process ID, which gives you fairly uncorrelated results in multiple invocations.
This option was new in Netpbm 10.61 (December 2012).