man5/charmap.5

   1 .\" Copyright (C) 1994  Jochen Hein (Hein@Student.TU-Clausthal.de)
   2 .\"
   3 .\" SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
   4 .\"
   5 .TH charmap 5 (date) "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"
   6 .SH NAME
   7 charmap \- character set description file
   8 .SH DESCRIPTION
   9 A character set description (charmap) defines all available characters
  10 and their encodings in a character set.
  11 .BR localedef (1)
  12 can use charmaps to create locale variants for different character sets.
  13 .SS Syntax
  14 The charmap file starts with a header that may consist of the
  15 following keywords:
  16 .TP
  17 .RI < code_set_name >
  18 is followed by the name of the character map.
  19 .TP
  20 .RI < comment_char >
  21 is followed by a character that will be used as the comment character
  22 for the rest of the file.
  23 It defaults to the number sign (#).
  24 .TP
  25 .RI < escape_char >
  26 is followed by a character that should be used as the escape character
  27 for the rest of the file to mark characters that should be interpreted
  28 in a special way.
  29 It defaults to the backslash (\e).
  30 .TP
  31 .RI < mb_cur_max >
  32 is followed by the maximum number of bytes for a character.
  33 The default value is 1.
  34 .TP
  35 .RI < mb_cur_min >
  36 is followed by the minimum number of bytes for a character.
  37 This value must be less than or equal than
  38 .RI < mb_cur_max >.
  39 If not specified, it defaults to
  40 .RI < mb_cur_max >.
  41 .PP
  42 The character set definition section starts with the keyword
  43 .I CHARMAP
  44 in the first column.
  45 .PP
  46 The following lines may have one of the two following forms to
  47 define the character set:
  48 .TP
  49 .RI < character >\  byte-sequence\ comment
  50 This form defines exactly one character and its byte sequence,
  51 .I comment
  52 being optional.
  53 .TP
  54 .RI < character >..< character >\  byte-sequence\ comment
  55 This form defines a character range and its byte sequence,
  56 .I comment
  57 being optional.
  58 .PP
  59 The character set definition section ends with the string
  60 .IR "END CHARMAP" .
  61 .PP
  62 The character set definition section may optionally be followed by a
  63 section to define widths of characters.
  64 .PP
  65 The
  66 .I WIDTH_DEFAULT
  67 keyword can be used to define the default width for all characters
  68 not explicitly listed.
  69 The default character width is 1.
  70 .PP
  71 The width section for individual characters starts with the keyword
  72 .I WIDTH
  73 in the first column.
  74 .PP
  75 The following lines may have one of the two following forms to
  76 define the widths of the characters:
  77 .TP
  78 .RI < character >\  width
  79 This form defines the width of exactly one character.
  80 .TP
  81 .RI < character >...< character >\  width
  82 This form defines the width for all the characters in the range.
  83 .PP
  84 The width definition section ends with the string
  85 .IR "END WIDTH" .
  86 .SH FILES
  87 .TP
  88 .I /usr/share/i18n/charmaps
  89 Usual default character map path.
  90 .SH STANDARDS
  91 POSIX.2.
  92 .SH EXAMPLES
  93 The Euro sign is defined as follows in the
  94 .I UTF\-8
  95 charmap:
  96 .PP
  97 .nf
  98 <U20AC>     /xe2/x82/xac EURO SIGN
  99 .fi
 100 .SH SEE ALSO
 101 .BR iconv (1),
 102 .BR locale (1),
 103 .BR localedef (1),
 104 .BR locale (5),
 105 .BR charsets (7)