By Arnaud Le Hors.
XPixMap (XPM) consists of an ASCII image format and a C library. The format defines how to store color images (X Pixmap) in a portable and powerful way. The library provides a set of functions to store and retrieve images to and from XPM format data, being either files, buffers (files in memory), or data (included files).
While XPM is not an X Consortium standard, it is already a de facto standard. It is used in many applications both commercial and non-commercial. Several vendors distribute the XPM library, as contributed software, on the platforms they sell. Moreover, the Common Desktop Environment specifies that icons must be stored either in XBM or XPM format. Finally, Motif 2.0 from OSF includes the XPM library, allowing XPM to be used in addition to XBM.
XPM has nothing to do with dates in any form. The XPM library is therefore Y2K compliant.
Daniel Dardailler wrote a nice page on how this whold XPM story happened.
The XPM library comes with a README, a FAQ, and a Reference Manual which should provide you with all you need to succesfully use XPM in your application.
However, you can also purchase The X Resource, issue twelve from O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. which contains both a tutorial and a full documentation.
Or you can purchase the XPONENT newsletter issued in summer 94, which includes a general description and a short tutorial.
Besides, you can also retrieve the paper xpm-3-paper.ps.gz which discusses the rationales behind the XPM format.
The XPM distribution is available on the koala ftp server at ftp://koala.inria.fr/pub/xpm. It is
available both in source and binaries for various systems. It includes the
library, the header file, and the two programs sxpm (to show xpm files) and
cxpm (to check xpm files).
In addition, you can also find it at ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/libraries.
You may find the XPM distribution on other sites too but it may be out of date, since I only upload on the two sites mentionned above.
There is a mailing list to talk about XPM. This is xpm-talk@sophia.inria.fr. Any request to subscribe must be sent to xpm-talk-request@sophia.inria.fr.
The mailing list archive can be accessed sorted by hypermail at http://www.inria.fr/koala/xpm-talk-hypermail or by FTP at ftp://koala.inria.fr/pub/xpm/xpm-talk-archive