color package options

Synopsis (must be in the document preamble):

\usepackage[comma-separated option list]{color}

When you load the color package there are two kinds of available options.

The first specifies the printer driver. LaTeX doesn’t contain information about different output systems but instead depends on information stored in a file. Normally you should not specify the driver option in the document, and instead rely on your system’s default. One advantage of this is that it makes the document portable across systems. For completeness we include a list of the drivers. The currently relevant ones are: dvipdfmx, dvips, dvisvgm, luatex, pdftex, xetex. The two xdvi and oztex are essentially aliases for dvips (and xdvi is monochrome). Ones that should not be used for new systems are: dvipdf, dvipdfm, dviwin, dvipsone, emtex, pctexps, pctexwin, pctexhp, pctex32, truetex, tcidvi, vtex (and dviwindo is an alias for dvipsone).

The second kind of options, beyond the drivers, are below.

monochrome

Disable the color commands, so that they do not generate errors but do not generate color either.

dvipsnames

Make available a list of 68 color names that are often used, particularly in legacy documents. These color names were originally provided by the dvips driver, giving the option name.

nodvipsnames

Do not load that list of color names, saving LaTeX a tiny amount of memory space.