8 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 files
-a,-align C|B|T|Z    Center, Bottom, Top, or Zero page alignment; Z => -notex
-autoplain           Enable automatic importing of plain (default)
-batchMask           Mask fpu exceptions in batch mode
-batchView           View output files in batch mode
-bw                  Convert all colors to black and white
-c,-clearGUI         Clear GUI operations
-cmyk                Convert rgb colors to cmyk
-d,-debug            Enable debugging messages
-x,-deconstruct X    Deconstruct into transparent GIF objects magnified by X
-gray                Convert all colors to grayscale
-h,-help             Show summary of options
-historylines n      Retain n lines of history (default 1000)
-i,-ignoreGUI        Ignore GUI operations
-inlinetex           Generate inline tex code
-interactiveMask     Mask fpu exceptions in interactive mode
-interactiveView     View output files in interactive mode
-k,-keep             Keep intermediate files
-l,-listvariables    List available global functions and variables
-localhistory        Use a local interactive history file
-m,-mask             Mask fpu exceptions
-O,-offset pair      PostScript offset
-f,-outformat format Convert each output file to specified format
-o,-outname name     (First) output file name
-p,-parseonly        Parse test
-rgb                 Convert cmyk colors to rgb
-safe                Disable system call (default)
-tex                 Enable LaTeX label postprocessing (default)
-s,-translate        Translate test
-unsafe              Enable system call
-v,-verbose          Increase verbosity level

All boolean options, except for -unsafe and -safe, can be negated by prepending no to the option name.

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.

Default option values may be entered as Asymptote code in a configuration file named config.asy (or the file specified by the environment variable ASYMPTOTE_CONFIG or -config option). Asymptote will look for this file in its usual search path. Typically the configuration file is placed in the .asy directory in the user's home directory (%USERPROFILE%/.asy under MSDOS). Configuration variables are accessed using the long form of the option names:

import settings;
View=true;

An alternative output format (without antialiasing) 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). To give specific options to the convert program, call convert manually. This example enables antialiasing and produces a tiff format at double the usual size:

asy -o - venn | convert -density 288x288 -geometry 100%x eps:- venn.tiff

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.

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 and included module names and final LaTeX and dvips processing information.

-vvv

Also output LaTeX bidirectional pipe diagnostics.

-vvvv

Also output knot guide solver diagnostics.

-vvvvv

Also output Asymptote traceback diagnostics.