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7 Options

Type asy -h to see the full list of command line options supported by Asymptote:

Usage: asy [options] [file ...]

Options: 

-V, -View        View output file (MSDOS default)
-n, -noView      Don't view output file (UNIX default)
-x magnification Deconstruct into transparent GIF objects
-c               Clear GUI operations
-i               Ignore GUI operations
-f format        Convert each output file to specified format
-o name          (First) output file name (- denotes standard output)
-h, -help        Show summary of options
-O pair          PostScript offset
-C               Center on page (default)
-B               Align to bottom-left corner of page
-T               Align to top-left corner of page
-Z               Position origin at (0,0) (implies -L)
-d               Enable debugging messages
-v, -verbose     Increase verbosity level
-k               Keep intermediate files
-L               Disable LaTeX label postprocessing
-t               Produce LaTeX file for \usepackage[inline]{asymptote}
-p               Parse test
-s               Translate test
-l               List available global functions and variables
-m               Mask fpu exceptions (default for interactive mode)
-nomask          Don't mask fpu exceptions (default for batch mode)
-bw              Convert colors to black and white
-gray            Convert colors to grayscale
-rgb             Convert cmyk colors to rgb
-cmyk            Convert rgb colors to cmyk
-safe            Disable system call (default)
-unsafe          Enable system call
-localhistory    Use a local interactive history file
-noplain         Disable automatic importing of plain

If no arguments are given, Asymptote runs in interactive mode (see Interactive mode). In this case, the default output file is out.eps.

If - is given as the file argument, Asymptote reads from standard input.

If multiple files are specified, they are treated as separate Asymptote runs.

An alternative output format may be produced by using the -f format option. This supports any format supported by the ImageMagick convert program (version 6.2.4 or later recommended).

If the option -unsafe is given, Asymptote runs in unsafe mode. This enables the int system(string) call, allowing one to execute arbitrary shell commands. The default mode, -safe, disables this call.

By default, Asymptote attempts to center the figure on the page, assuming that the paper type is letter. The default paper type may be changed to a4 with the environment variable ASYMPTOTE_PAPERTYPE. Currently only these two paper types are supported. Note that adding a new type, say poster, will also require defining posterSize in the dvips configuration file.

A PostScript offset may be specified as a pair (in bp units) with the -O option:

asy -O 0,0 file

The default offset is zero. The offset is adjusted if it would result in a negative vertical bounding box coordinate.

Additional debugging output is produced with each additional -v option:

-v
Display top-level module and final output file names.
-vv
Also display imported module names and final LaTeX and dvips processing information.
-vvv
Also output LaTeX bidirectional pipe diagnostics.
-vvvv
Also output knot solver diagnostics.
-vvvvv
Also output Asymptote traceback diagnostics.

Default values for these options may also be entered in the file .asy/options in the user's home directory (in the same format as on the command line, except that the options may be distributed over multiple lines). Command-line options override these defaults.