À propos des fichiers XPM

XPM (X PixMap · Format d'image)

Lancement 1989 Par Daniel Dardailler, Colas Nahaboo

X PixMap (.xpm) est un format de fichier pris en charge par KaijuConverter pour l’archivage, l’échange professionnel et la conversion multiplateforme.

Famille

Raster & Vector Images

Extension

.xpm

Type MIME

image/x-xpixmap

Utilisable comme

Entrée Sortie

L'histoire

COMMENT XPM
A VU LE JOUR.

XPM — X PixMap — was designed in 1989 by Daniel Dardailler and Colas Nahaboo at Bull Research Centre for the X Window System, the classic Unix GUI display server. Unlike binary image formats, an XPM file is valid C source code: a 2D character array where each ASCII character corresponds to a color. Compile the XPM directly into a C program and you have an embedded icon. The format’s other charm: it’s human-editable in any text editor.

For most of the 1990s and 2000s, every X11 application stored its icons and cursors as .xpm. Window managers, file managers, toolkit widgets — all .xpm under the hood. As modern UI toolkits (GTK, Qt) moved to PNG and SVG for icons, XPM receded. It still appears in X11 system files and in some retro Linux distributions, preserving the aesthetic of "you can literally write an icon in vi."

CURIOSITÉS ET
ANECDOTES.

An XPM file is valid C code — you can #include it directly into a program and use the resulting character array as an embedded icon.

XWindow's cursor, icon, and pixmap resources used XPM throughout the 1990s — every X11 app shipped with dozens of .xpm files.

XPM was one of the first image formats to support transparency via a dedicated "None" color value.

You can write an XPM icon in a plain text editor by typing character art — one of the few image formats with that property.

Modern GTK and Qt have largely replaced XPM with PNG and SVG, but system-level X11 still carries XPM traces.

POINTS FORTS ET
LIMITES.

Points forts

Valid C source — directly embeddable in code.
Text-editable in any editor.
Transparency via "None" color value.
Stable since 1989 with no breaking changes.

Limites

Enormous file sizes vs compressed formats.
Only useful within X11 / legacy Unix GUI ecosystem.
Limited color palette in classic form (256 colors max practical).
Superseded by PNG and SVG for modern UI.

Tailles et poids typiques

Small icon (32×32, 16 colors)

2-5 KB

Toolbar button set

10-50 KB

Spécifications techniques

MIME type: image/x-xpixmap
Extension: .xpm
Encoding: ASCII text (valid C source)
Native environment: X Window System (X11)
Predecessor: .xbm (X Bitmap, 1-bit)

CONVERTIR DEPUIS
XPM

xpm jpg xpm png xpm webp xpm avif xpm gif xpm bmp xpm tiff xpm ico xpm svg xpm pdf

CONVERTIR EN
XPM

jpg xpm png xpm webp xpm gif xpm bmp xpm tiff xpm avif xpm psd xpm ico xpm svg xpm

Cas d'usage courants

X Window system icons, Unix desktop themes, embedded color bitmaps