(Contraction of "pixel map"). A 3 dimensional array of bits corresponding to a 2 dimensional array of pixels. It is used, for example, in the X Window System to describe a memory region where graphics can be drawn without affecting the screen. Typically this is used for the efficient handling of expose events, icon images or for animation. Compare bitmap. [Xlib Guide].

X PixMap (XPM) is an image file format used by the X Window System, created in 1989 by Daniel Dardailler and Colas Nahaboo working at Bull Research Center at Sophia Antipolis, France, and later enhanced by Arnaud Le Hors.

<file format> (PPM) A colour image file format. A PPM file contains the following: a two character "magic number" - "P3", the width in pixels, the height in pixels, the maximum colour component value, HEIGHT rows of WIDTH pixels. The rows are ordered from top to bottom with the pixels in each row ordered from left to right. Each pixel is represented as three values for red, green, and blue. All parts are separated by whitespace and numbers are in decimal ASCIII representation. A zero pixel component means that colour is absent. Characters from a "#" to the next end-of-line are ignored and no line should be longer than 70 characters. Here is an example of a small pixmap in this format: P3 # feep.ppm 4 4 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 15 0 0 0 0 15 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 7 0 0 0 15 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A "RAWBITS" variant has magic number "P6", pixel values are stored as plain binary bytes, instead of ASCII decimal and no whitespace is allowed after a single whitespace character after the maximum colour component value which must be less than or equal to 255. (1998-02-06)