The file rfc1345.tmac defines special character escape sequences
for groff(7) based on the glyph mnemonics specified in RFC 1345
and the digraph table of the text editor Vim. Each escape
sequence translates to a Unicode code point, and will render
correctly if the underlying font is a Unicode font that covers
the code point.
For example, “\[Rx]” is the “recipe” or “prescription take”
symbol, and maps to the code point U+211E. groff lets you write
it as “\[u211E]”, but “\[Rx]” is more mnemonic.
For a list of the glyph names provided, please see the file
rfc1345.tmac, which contains definitions of the form
.char \[Rx] \[u211E] \" PRESCRIPTION TAKE
where .char's first argument defines a groff special character
escape sequence with a mnemonic glyph name, its second argument
is a special character escape sequence based on the code point,
and the comment describes the glyph defined.
The RFC 1345 glyph names cover a wide range of Unicode code
points, including supplemental Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew,
Arabic, Hiragana, Katakana, and Bopomofo letters, punctuation,
math notation, currency symbols, industrial and entertainment
icons, and box-drawing symbols.
The Vim digraph table is largely a subset of RFC 1345 (being
limited to two-character mnemonics), but, as a newer
implementation, adds several mnemonics not specified in the RFC
(Latin capital and small letters W and Y with grave accent,
bullet, horizontal ellipsis, quadruple prime, and two mappings
each for the Euro and rouble signs). These have also been added
to rfc1345.tmac.
rfc1345.tmac contains about 1,700 glyph names. It is not an
error to load rfc1345.tmac if your font does not have all the
glyphs, as long as it contains the glyphs that you actually use
in your document.
The RFC 1345 mnemonics are not identical in every case to the
mappings for special character glyph names that are built in to
groff; for example, “\[<<]” means the “much less than” sign
(U+226A) when rfc1345.tmac is not loaded and this special
character is not otherwise defined by a document or macro
package. rfc1345.tmac redefines “\[<<]” to the “left-pointing
double angle quotation mark” (U+00AB). See groff_char(7) for the
full list of predefined special character escape sequences.
Usage
Load the rfc1345.tmac file. This can be done by either adding
“.mso rfc1345.tmac” to your document before the first use of any
of the glyph names the macro file defines, or by using the
troff(1) option “-m rfc1345” from the shell.
Bugs
As the groff Texinfo manual notes, “[o]nly the current font is
checked for ligatures and kerns; neither special fonts nor
entities defined with the char request (and its siblings) are
taken into account.” Many of the characters defined in
rfc1345.tmac are accented Latin letters, and will be affected by
this deficiency, producing subpar typography
⟨https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59932⟩.
RFC 1345 ⟨https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1345⟩, by Keld Simonsen,
June 1992.
The Vim digraph table can be listed using the vim(1) command
“:help digraph-table”.
groff_char(7)
This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project. Information
about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩.
This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/groff.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2024-06-10.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
groff 1.23.0.1273-9d53-dirty 6 June 2024 groff_rfc1345(7)