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groff_char(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual groff_char(7)
groff_char - GNU roff special character and glyph repertoire
The GNU roff typesetting system has a large glyph repertoire
suitable for production of varied literary, professional,
technical, and mathematical documents. However, its input
character set is restricted to that defined by the standards ISO
Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) and IBM code page 1047 (an arrangement of
EBCDIC). For ease of document maintenance in UTF-8 environments,
it is advisable to use only the Unicode basic Latin code points,
a subset of all of the foregoing historically referred to as
US-ASCII, which has only 94 visible, printable code points.
AT&T troff in the 1970s faced a similar problem of typesetter
devices with a glyph repertoire differing from that of the
computers that controlled them. The solution troff adopted was a
form of escape sequence known as a special character to access
several dozen additional glyphs available in the fonts prepared
for mounting in the phototypesetter. These glyphs were mapped
onto a two-character name space for a degree of mnemonic
convenience; for example, the escape sequence \(aa encoded an
acute accent and \(sc a section sign.
As in other respects, groff has removed historical roff
limitations on the lengths of special character escapes, but
recognizes and retains compatibility with the historical names.
groff expands the lexicon of glyphs available by name and permits
users to define their own special character escapes with the
.char request.
This document lists all of the glyph names predefined by groff
and describes the systematic notation by which it enables access
to arbitrary Unicode code points and construction of composite
glyphs. The glyphs listed in this document may not be available,
or may vary in appearance, depending on the output driver chosen
when the page was rendered (with the -T option to the man(1) or
roff programs). The driver used in generation of this page was
“utf8”.
A few escape sequences that are not special character escapes
also produce glyphs; these exist for syntactical or historical
reasons. They include \\, \', \`, \-, \. (backslash-dot), and
\e; see groff(7). Of these, only \- is also available as a
special character of the same name, in the form \[-]. A small
number of special characters represent glyphs that are not
encoded in Unicode; examples include the baseline rule \[ru] and
the Bell Systems logo \[bs].
In groff, you can test output driver support for any character
(ordinary or special) with the conditional “c”.
.ie c \[bs] \{Welcome to the \[bs] Bell System;
did you get the Wehrmacht helmet or the Death Star?\}
.el No Bell Systems logo.
For brevity in the remainder of this document, we shall refer to
systems conforming to the ISO 646:1991 IRV, ISO 8859, or ISO
10646 (“Unicode”) character encoding standards as “ISO” systems,
and those employing IBM code page 1047 as “EBCDIC” systems. That
said, EBCDIC systems that support groff are known to also support
UTF-8.
While groff accepts eight-bit encoded input, not all such code
points are valid as input. On ISO platforms, character codes 0,
11, 13–31, and 128–159 are invalid. (This is all C0 and C1
controls except for SOH through LF [Control+A to Control+J], and
FF [Control+L].) On EBCDIC platforms, 0, 8–9, 11, 13–20, 23–31,
and 48–63 are invalid. Some of these code points are used by
groff for internal purposes, which is one reason it does not
support UTF-8 natively.
Fundamental character set
The ninety-four characters catalogued above, plus the space and
the newline, form the fundamental character set for groff input;
anything in the language, even over one million code points in
Unicode, can be expressed using it. On ISO systems, code points
in the range 33–126 comprise a common set of printable glyphs in
all of the aforementioned ISO character encoding standards. It
is this character set and (with some noteworthy exceptions) the
corresponding glyph repertoire for which AT&T troff was
implemented. On EBCDIC systems, printable characters are in the
range 66–201 and 203–254; those without counterparts in the ISO
range 33–126 are discussed in the next subsection.
All of the following characters map to glyphs as you would
expect.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│! # $ % & ( ) * + , . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ │
│A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ ] _ │
│a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | } │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The remaining seven of the ninety-four code points in this range
surprise computing professionals and others intimately familiar
with the ISO character encodings. The developers of AT&T troff
chose mappings for them that would be useful for typesetting
technical literature in a broad range of scientific disciplines;
the preparation of AT&T's patent filings with the U.S. government
was the application of the system that “paid the bills” at the
Bell Labs site where troff and Unix were first developed. It is
also worth noting that the prevailing character encoding standard
in the 1970s, USAS X3.4-1968 (“ASCII”) deliberately supported
semantic ambiguity at some code points, and outright substitution
at several others, to suit the localization demands of various
national standards bodies.
The table below presents the seven exceptional code points with
their typical keycap engravings, their glyph mappings and
semantics in roff systems, and the escapes producing the Unicode
basic Latin character they replace. The first, the neutral
double quote, is a partial exception because it does represent
itself, but since it is also used by roff systems to quote macro
arguments, groff supports a special character escape as an
alternative form so that the glyph can be easily included in
macro arguments without requiring the user to master the quoting
rules that AT&T troff required in that context. Furthermore, not
all of the special character escapes are portable to AT&T troff
and all of its descendants; these groff extensions are presented
using its special character escape form \[], whereas portable
special character escapes are shown in the traditional \( form.
\- and \e are portable to all known troffs. \e means “the glyph
of the current escape character”; it therefore can produce
unexpected output if the .ec or .eo requests are used. On
devices with a limited glyph repertoire, the appearances of
glyphs on the same row of the table may be identical; except for
the neutral double quote, this will not be the case on more-
capable devices. Review your document using as many different
postprocessors as possible.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Keycap Appearance and meaning Special character and meaning │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│" " neutral double quote \[dq] neutral double quote │
│' ’ closing single quote \[aq] neutral apostrophe │
│- - hyphen \- or \[-] hyphen-minus │
│\ (escape character) \e or \[rs] reverse solidus │
│^ ˆ modifier circumflex \(ha circumflex/caret/“hat” │
│` ‘ opening single quote \(ga grave accent │
│~ ˜ modifier tilde \(ti tilde │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The hyphen-minus is a particularly unfortunate case of
overloading. Its awkward name in ISO 8859 and later standards
reflects the many conflicting purposes to which it had already
been put in the 1980s, including a hyphen, a minus sign, and
(alone or in repetition) dashes of varying widths. For best
results in groff, use the character in input without an escape
only to mean a hyphen, as in the phrase “long-term”. For a minus
sign in running prose or a Unix command-line option dash, use \-
(or \[-] in groff if you find it helps the clarity of the source
document). AT&T troff supported em-dashes as \(em.
The special character escape for the apostrophe as a neutral
single quote is typically needed only in technical content;
typing words like “can't” and “Anne's” in a natural way will
render correctly, because in ordinary prose an apostrophe is
typeset either as a closing single quotation mark or as a neutral
single quote, depending on the capabilities of the output device.
By contrast, special character escapes should be used for
quotation marks unless portability to limited or historical troff
implementations is necessary; on those systems, the input
convention is to pair the grave accent with the apostrophe for
single quotes, and to double both characters for double quotes.
AT&T troff defined no special characters for quotation marks or
the apostrophe. Repeated single quotes (‘‘thus’’) will be
visually distinguishable from double quotes (“thus”) on terminal
devices, and perhaps on others (depending on the font selected).
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│AT&T troff input recommended groff input │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│A Winter's Tale A Winter's Tale │
│`U.K. outer quotes' \[oq]U.K. outer quotes\[cq] │
│`U.K. ``inner'' quotes' \[oq]U.K. \[lq]inner\[rq] quotes\[cq] │
│``U.S. outer quotes'' \[lq]U.S. outer quotes\[rq] │
│``U.S. `inner' quotes'' \[lq]U.S. \[oq]inner\[cq] quotes\[rq] │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
If you expect to use quotation marks frequently in your document,
see if the macro package you're using defines strings or macros
to facilitate quotation.
Using Unicode basic Latin characters to compose boxes and lines
is ill-advised. roff systems have special characters for drawing
straight horizontal and vertical lines; see subsection “Rules and
lines” below. Preprocessors like tbl(1) and pic(1) draw boxes
and will produce the best possible output for the device, falling
back to basic Latin glyphs only when necessary.
Eight-bit encodings and Latin-1 supplement
ISO 646 is a seven-bit code encoding 128 code points; eight-bit
codes are twice the size. ISO 8859-1 and code page 1047
allocated the additional space to what Unicode calls “C1
controls” (control characters) and the “Latin-1 supplement”. The
C1 controls are neither printable nor usable as groff input.
Two characters in the Latin-1 supplement are handled specially.
troff never produces them as output.
NBSP encodes the no-break space. On input it is mapped to \~,
the adjustable non-breaking space escape.
SHY encodes the soft hyphen character. On input it is mapped
to \%, the hyphenation control escape.
The remaining characters in the Latin-1 supplement represent
themselves. Although they can be specified directly with the
keyboard on systems configured to use Latin-1 as the character
encoding, it is more portable, both to other roff systems and to
UTF-8 environments, to use their glyph names, shown below.
¡ \[r!] inverted exclamation mark Ñ \[~N] N tilde
¢ \[ct] cent sign Ò \[`O] O grave
£ \[Po] pound sign Ó \['O] O acute
¤ \[Cs] currency sign Ô \[^O] O circumflex
¥ \[Ye] yen sign Õ \[~O] O tilde
¦ \[bb] broken bar Ö \[:O] O dieresis
§ \[sc] section sign × \[mu] multiplication sign
¨ \[ad] dieresis accent Ø \[/O] O slash
© \[co] copyright sign Ù \[`U] U grave
ª \[Of] feminine ordinal indicator Ú \['U] U acute
« \[Fo] left double chevron Û \[^U] U circumflex
¬ \[no] logical not Ü \[:U] U dieresis
® \[rg] registered sign Ý \['Y] Y acute
¯ \[a-] macron accent Þ \[TP] uppercase thorn
° \[de] degree sign ß \[ss] lowercase sharp s
± \[+-] plus-minus à \[`a] a grave
² \[S2] superscript two á \['a] a acute
³ \[S3] superscript three â \[^a] a circumflex
´ \[aa] acute accent ã \[~a] a tilde
µ \[mc] micro sign ä \[:a] a dieresis
¶ \[ps] pilcrow sign å \[oa] a ring
· \[pc] centered period æ \[ae] a+e combined
¸ \[ac] cedilla accent ç \[,c] c cedilla
¹ \[S1] superscript one è \[`e] e grave
º \[Om] masculine ordinal indicator é \['e] e acute
» \[Fc] right double chevron ê \[^e] e circumflex
¼ \[14] one quarter symbol ë \[:e] e dieresis
½ \[12] one half symbol ì \[`i] i grave
¾ \[34] three quarters symbol í \['i] e acute
¿ \[r?] inverted question mark î \[^i] i circumflex
À \[`A] A grave ï \[:i] i dieresis
Á \['A] A acute ð \[Sd] lowercase eth
 \[^A] A circumflex ñ \[~n] n tilde
à \[~A] A tilde ò \[`o] o grave
Ä \[:A] A dieresis ó \['o] o acute
Å \[oA] A ring ô \[^o o circumflex
Æ \[AE] A+E combined õ \[~o] o tilde
Ç \[,C] C cedilla ö \[:o] o dieresis
È \[`E] E grave ÷ \[di] division sign
É \['E] E acute ø \[/o] o slash
Ê \[^E] E circumflex ù \[`u] u grave
Ë \[:E] E dieresis ú \['u] u acute
Ì \[`I] I grave û \[^u] u circumflex
Í \['I] I acute ü \[:u] u dieresis
Î \[^I] I circumflex ý \['y] y acute
Ï \[:I] I dieresis þ \[Tp] lowercase thorn
Ð \[-D] uppercase eth ÿ \[:y] y dieresis
Special character escape forms
Glyphs that lack a character code in the basic Latin repertoire
to directly represent them are entered by one of several special
character escape forms. Such glyphs can be simple or composite,
and accessed either by name or numerically by code point. Code
points and combining properties are determined by character
encoding standards, whereas glyph names originated in AT&T troff
special character escapes. Glyph names are not limited to
alphanumeric characters; any of the printable characters from the
Unicode basic Latin repertoire may be used.
\(gl is a special character escape for the glyph with the two-
character name gl. This is the syntax form supported by
AT&T troff. The acute accent, \(aa, is an example.
\[glyph-name]
is a special character escape for glyph-name, which can be
of arbitrary length. The foregoing acute accent example
could be expressed in groff as \[aa].
An ordinary input character “c” is not the same as \[c];
the latter is internally mapped to glyph name “\c”. In
other words, “\[a]” is not “a”, but rather \a, the
uninterpreted leader escape sequence. By default, groff
defines a single glyph name of length one, namely the
hyphen-minus, which can be accessed as either \- or \[-].
\[base-glyph composite-1 composite-2 ... composite-n]
is a composite glyph. Glyphs like a lowercase “e” with an
acute accent, as in the word “café”, can be expressed as
\[e aa]. See subsection “Accents” below for a table of
combining glyph names.
Unicode encodes far more characters than groff has glyph names
for; special character escape forms based on numerical code
points enable access to any of them. Frequently used glyphs or
glyph combinations can be stored in strings, and new glyph names
can be created with the .char request, enabling the user to
devise ad hoc names for them; see groff(7).
\[unnnn[n[n]]]
is a Unicode numeric special character escape. With this
form, any Unicode point can be indicated using four to six
hexadecimal digits, with hexadecimal letters accepted in
uppercase form only. Thus, \[u02DA] accesses the
(spacing) ring accent, producing “˚”.
Unicode code points can be composed as well; when they are, troff
requires NFD (Normalization Form D), where all Unicode glyphs are
maximally decomposed. (Exception: precomposed characters in the
Latin-1 supplement described above are also accepted. Do not
count on this exception remaining in a future troff that accepts
UTF-8 input directly.) Thus, troff accepts “caf\['e]”,
“caf\[e aa]”, and “caf\[u0065_0301]”, as ways to input “café”.
(Due to its ISO Latin-1 and IBM code page 1047 compatibility, at
present it also accepts “caf\[u00E9]”).
\[ubase-glyph[_combining-component]...]
constructs a composite glyph from Unicode numeric special
character escapes. The code points of the base glyph and
the combining components are each expressed in
hexadecimal, with an underscore (_) separating each
component. Thus, \[u0065_0301] produces “é”.
\[charnnn]
expresses an eight-bit code point where nnn is the code
point of the character, a decimal number between 0 and 255
without leading zeroes. This legacy numeric special
character escape is used to map characters onto glyphs via
the .trin request in macro files loaded by grotty(1).
In this section, groff's glyph name repertoire is presented in
tabular form. The meanings of the columns are as follows.
Output shows the glyph as it appears on the device used to
render this document; although it can have a notably
different shape on other devices (and is subject to user-
directed translation and replacement), groff attempts
reasonable equivalency on all output devices.
Input shows the groff character (ordinary or special) that
normally produces the glyph. Some code points have
multiple glyph names.
Unicode is the code point notation for the glyph or combining
glyph sequence as described in subsection “Special
character escape forms” above. It corresponds to the
standard notation for Unicode short identifiers such that
groff's unnnn is equivalent to Unicode's U+nnnn.
Notes describes the glyph, elucidating the mnemonic value of
the glyph name where possible.
A plus sign “+” indicates that the glyph name appears in
the AT&T troff user's manual, CSTR #54 (1992 revision).
When using the AT&T special character syntax \(xx,
widespread portability can be expected from such names.
Entries marked with “***” denote glyphs used for
mathematical purposes. On typesetter devices, such
glyphs are typically drawn from a special font (see
groff_font(5)). Often, such glyphs have metrics which
look incongruous in normal text. A few which are not
uncommon in running prose have “text variants”, which
should work better in that context. Conversely, a
handful of glyphs that are normally drawn from a regular
font are required in mathematical text. Both sets of
exceptions are noted in the tables where they appear
(“Logical symbols” and “Mathematical symbols”).
Basic Latin
Apart from basic Latin characters with special mappings,
described in subsection “Fundamental character set” above, a few
others in that range have special character glyph names. These
were defined for ease of input on non-U.S. keyboards lacking
keycaps for them, or for symmetry with other special character
glyph names serving a similar purpose.
The vertical bar is overloaded; the \[ba] and \[or] escapes may
render differently. See subsection “Mathematical symbols” below
for special variants of the plus, minus, and equals signs
normally drawn from this range.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
" \[dq] u0022 neutral double quote
# \[sh] u0023 number sign
$ \[Do] u0024 dollar sign
' \[aq] u0027 apostrophe, neutral single quote
/ \[sl] u002F slash, solidus +
@ \[at] u0040 at sign
[ \[lB] u005B left square bracket
\ \[rs] u005C reverse solidus
] \[rB] u005D right square bracket
^ \[ha] u005E circumflex, caret, “hat” +
_ \[ul] u005F underscore, low line +
{ \[lC] u007B left brace
| | u007C bar
| \[ba] u007C bar
| \[or] u007C bitwise or +
} \[rC] u007D right brace
~ \[ti] u007E tilde +
Supplementary Latin letters
Historically, \[ss] could be considered a ligature of “sz”. An
uppercase form is available as \[u1e9e], but in the German
language it is of specialized use; ß does not normally uppercase-
transform to it, but rather to “SS”. “Lowercase f with hook” is
also used as a function symbol; see subsection “Mathematical
symbols” below.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Ð \[-D] u00D0 uppercase eth
ð \[Sd] u00F0 lowercase eth
Þ \[TP] u00DE uppercase thorn
þ \[Tp] u00FE lowercase thorn
ß \[ss] u00DF lowercase sharp s
ı \[.i] u0131 i without tittle
ȷ \[.j] u0237 j without tittle
ƒ \[Fn] u0192 lowercase f with hook, function
Ligatures and digraphs
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
ff \[ff] u0066_0066 ff ligature +
fi \[fi] u0066_0069 fi ligature +
fl \[fl] u0066_006C fl ligature +
ffi \[Fi] u0066_0066_0069 ffi ligature +
ffl \[Fl] u0066_0066_006C ffl ligature +
Æ \[AE] u00C6 AE ligature
æ \[ae] u00E6 ae ligature
Π\[OE] u0152 OE ligature
œ \[oe] u0153 oe ligature
IJ \[IJ] u0132 IJ digraph
ij \[ij] u0133 ij digraph
Ł \[/L] u0141 L with stroke
ł \[/l] u0142 l with stroke
Ø \[/O] u00D8 O with stroke
ø \[/o] u00F8 o with stroke
Accented characters
All of these glyphs can be composed using combining glyph names
as described in subsection “Special character escape forms”
above; the names below can be thought of short aliases for
convenience.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Á \['A] u0041_0301 A acute
Ć \['C] u0043_0301 C acute
É \['E] u0045_0301 E acute
Í \['I] u0049_0301 I acute
Ó \['O] u004F_0301 O acute
Ú \['U] u0055_0301 U acute
Ý \['Y] u0059_0301 Y acute
á \['a] u0061_0301 a acute
ć \['c] u0063_0301 c acute
é \['e] u0065_0301 e acute
í \['i] u0069_0301 i acute
ó \['o] u006F_0301 o acute
ú \['u] u0075_0301 u acute
ý \['y] u0079_0301 y acute
Ä \[:A] u0041_0308 A dieresis
Ë \[:E] u0045_0308 E dieresis
Ï \[:I] u0049_0308 I dieresis
Ö \[:O] u004F_0308 O dieresis
Ü \[:U] u0055_0308 U dieresis
Ÿ \[:Y] u0059_0308 Y dieresis
ä \[:a] u0061_0308 a dieresis
ë \[:e] u0065_0308 e dieresis
ï \[:i] u0069_0308 i dieresis
ö \[:o] u006F_0308 o dieresis
ü \[:u] u0075_0308 u dieresis
ÿ \[:y] u0079_0308 y dieresis
 \[^A] u0041_0302 A circumflex
Ê \[^E] u0045_0302 E circumflex
Î \[^I] u0049_0302 I circumflex
Ô \[^O] u004F_0302 O circumflex
Û \[^U] u0055_0302 U circumflex
â \[^a] u0061_0302 a circumflex
ê \[^e] u0065_0302 e circumflex
î \[^i] u0069_0302 i circumflex
ô \[^o] u006F_0302 o circumflex
û \[^u] u0075_0302 u circumflex
À \[`A] u0041_0300 A grave
È \[`E] u0045_0300 E grave
Ì \[`I] u0049_0300 I grave
Ò \[`O] u004F_0300 O grave
Ù \[`U] u0055_0300 U grave
à \[`a] u0061_0300 a grave
è \[`e] u0065_0300 e grave
ì \[`i] u0069_0300 i grave
ò \[`o] u006F_0300 o grave
ù \[`u] u0075_0300 u grave
à \[~A] u0041_0303 A tilde
Ñ \[~N] u004E_0303 N tilde
Õ \[~O] u004F_0303 O tilde
ã \[~a] u0061_0303 a tilde
ñ \[~n] u006E_0303 n tilde
õ \[~o] u006F_0303 o tilde
Š \[vS] u0053_030C S caron
š \[vs] u0073_030C s caron
Ž \[vZ] u005A_030C Z caron
ž \[vz] u007A_030C z caron
Ç \[,C] u0043_0327 C cedilla
ç \[,c] u0063_0327 c cedilla
Å \[oA] u0041_030A A ring
å \[oa] u0061_030A a ring
Accents
The .composite request is used to map the accents to code points
with non-spacing semantics; the values given in parentheses are
their spacing counterparts.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
˝ \[a"] u030B (u02DD) double acute accent
¯ \[a-] u0304 (u00AF) macron accent
˙ \[a.] u0307 (u02D9) dot accent
^ \[a^] u0302 (u005E) circumflex accent
´ \[aa] u0301 (u00B4) acute accent +
` \[ga] u0300 (u0060) grave accent +
˘ \[ab] u0306 (u02D8) breve accent
¸ \[ac] u0327 (u00B8) cedilla accent
¨ \[ad] u0308 (u00A8) dieresis accent
ˇ \[ah] u030C (u02C7) caron accent
˚ \[ao] u030A (u02DA) ring accent
~ \[a~] u0303 (u007E) tilde accent
˛ \[ho] u0328 (u02DB) hook accent
Quotation marks
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
„ \[Bq] u201E low double comma quote
‚ \[bq] u201A low single comma quote
“ \[lq] u201C left double quote
” \[rq] u201D right double quote
‘ \[oq] u2018 single open (left) quote
’ \[cq] u2019 single closing (right) quote
' \[aq] u0027 apostrophe, neutral single quote
" \[dq] u0022 neutral double quote
« \[Fo] u00AB left double chevron
» \[Fc] u00BB right double chevron
‹ \[fo] u2039 left single chevron
› \[fc] u203A right single chevron
Punctuation
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
¡ \[r!] u00A1 inverted exclamation mark
¿ \[r?] u00BF inverted question mark
— \[em] u2014 em-dash +
– \[en] u2013 en-dash
‐ \[hy] u2010 hyphen +
Brackets
On typestter devices, the bracket extensions are font-invariant
glyphs; that is, they are rendered the same way regardless of
font. On terminals, they are not font-invariant; groff maps them
rather arbitrarily to U+23AA (“curly bracket extension”). In
AT&T troff, only one glyph was available to vertically extend
brackets, braces, and parentheses: \(bv.
Not all devices supply bracket pieces that can be piled up with
\b due to the restrictions of the escape's piling algorithm. A
general solution to build brackets out of pieces is the following
macro:
.\" Make a pile centered vertically 0.5em above the baseline.
.\" The first argument is placed at the top.
.\" The pile is returned in string 'pile'.
.eo
.de pile-make
. nr pile-wd 0
. nr pile-ht 0
. ds pile-args
.
. nr pile-# \n[.$]
. while \n[pile-#] \{\
. nr pile-wd (\n[pile-wd] >? \w'\$[\n[pile-#]]')
. nr pile-ht +(\n[rst] - \n[rsb])
. as pile-args \v'\n[rsb]u'\"
. as pile-args \Z'\$[\n[pile-#]]'\"
. as pile-args \v'-\n[rst]u'\"
. nr pile-# -1
. \}
.
. ds pile \v'(-0.5m + (\n[pile-ht]u / 2u))'\"
. as pile \*[pile-args]\"
. as pile \v'((\n[pile-ht]u / 2u) + 0.5m)'\"
. as pile \h'\n[pile-wd]u'\"
..
.ec
Another complication is the fact that some glyphs which represent
bracket pieces in AT&T troff can be used for other mathematical
symbols as well, for example \(lf and \(rf which provide the
floor operator. Some output postprocessors, such as grodvi(1),
don't unify such glyphs. For this reason, the four glyphs \[lf],
\[rf], \[lc], and \[rc], are not unified with similar-looking
bracket pieces. In groff, only glyphs with long names are
guaranteed to pile up correctly for all devices—provided those
glyphs exist.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ \[lB] u005B left square bracket
] \[rB] u005D right square bracket
{ \[lC] u007B left brace
} \[rC] u007D right brace
⟨ \[la] u27E8 left angle bracket
⟩ \[ra] u27E9 right angle bracket
⎪ \[bv] u23AA brace vertical extension *** +
⎪ \[braceex] u23AA brace vertical extension
⎡ \[bracketlefttp] u23A1 left square bracket top
⎣ \[bracketleftbt] u23A3 left square bracket bottom
⎢ \[bracketleftex] u23A2 left square bracket extension
⎤ \[bracketrighttp] u23A4 right square bracket top
⎦ \[bracketrightbt] u23A6 right square bracket bottom
⎥ \[bracketrightex] u23A5 right square bracket extension
⎧ \[lt] u23A7 left brace top +
⎧ \[bracelefttp] u23A7 left brace top
⎨ \[lk] u23A8 left brace middle +
⎨ \[braceleftmid] u23A8 left brace middle
⎩ \[lb] u23A9 left brace bottom +
⎩ \[braceleftbt] u23A9 left brace bottom
⎪ \[braceleftex] u23AA left brace extension
⎫ \[rt] u23AB right brace top +
⎫ \[bracerighttp] u23AB right brace top
⎬ \[rk] u23AC right brace middle +
⎬ \[bracerightmid] u23AC right brace middle
⎭ \[rb] u23AD right brace bottom +
⎭ \[bracerightbt] u23AD right brace bottom
⎪ \[bracerightex] u23AA right brace extension
⎛ \[parenlefttp] u239B left parenthesis top
⎝ \[parenleftbt] u239D left parenthesis bottom
⎜ \[parenleftex] u239C left parenthesis extension
⎞ \[parenrighttp] u239E right parenthesis top
⎠ \[parenrightbt] u23A0 right parenthesis bottom
⎟ \[parenrightex] u239F right parenthesis extension
Arrows
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
← \[<-] u2190 horizontal arrow left +
→ \[->] u2192 horizontal arrow right +
↔ \[<>] u2194 bidirectional horizontal arrow
↓ \[da] u2193 vertical arrow down +
↑ \[ua] u2191 vertical arrow up +
↕ \[va] u2195 bidirectional vertical arrow
⇐ \[lA] u21D0 horizontal double arrow left
⇒ \[rA] u21D2 horizontal double arrow right
⇔ \[hA] u21D4 bidirectional horizontal double arrow
⇓ \[dA] u21D3 vertical double arrow down
⇑ \[uA] u21D1 vertical double arrow up
⇕ \[vA] u21D5 bidirectional vertical double arrow
⎯ \[an] u23AF horizontal arrow extension
Rules and lines
On typesetter devices, the font-invariant glyphs (see subsection
“Brackets” above) \[br], \[ul], and \[rn] form corners when
adjacent; they can be used to build boxes. On terminal devices,
they are mapped as shown in the table. The Unicode-derived names
of these three glyphs are approximations.
\[rn] also serves in AT&T troff as the horizontal extension of
the radical (square root) sign. The baseline rule \[ru] is a
font-invariant glyph, namely a rule of one-half em. In groff,
use \[radicalex] (see subsection “Mathematical symbols” below)
instead of \[rn], for continuation of radical signs (e.g., square
roots).
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
| | u007C bar
| \[ba] u007C bar
│ \[br] u2502 box rule +
_ \[ul] u005F underscore, low line +
‾ \[rn] u203E overline +
_ \[ru] --- baseline rule +
¦ \[bb] u00A6 broken bar
/ \[sl] u002F slash, solidus +
\ \[rs] u005C reverse solidus
Text markers
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
○ \[ci] u25CB circle +
• \[bu] u2022 bullet +
† \[dg] u2020 dagger +
‡ \[dd] u2021 double dagger +
◊ \[lz] u25CA lozenge, diamond
□ \[sq] u25A1 square +
¶ \[ps] u00B6 pilcrow sign
§ \[sc] u00A7 section sign +
☜ \[lh] u261C hand pointing left +
☞ \[rh] u261E hand pointing right +
@ \[at] u0040 at sign
# \[sh] u0023 number sign
↵ \[CR] u21B5 carriage return
✓ \[OK] u2713 check mark
Legal symbols
The Bell Systems logo is not supported in groff.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
© \[co] u00A9 copyright sign +
® \[rg] u00AE registered sign +
™ \[tm] u2122 trade mark sign
\[bs] --- Bell Systems logo +
Currency symbols
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
$ \[Do] u0024 dollar sign
¢ \[ct] u00A2 cent sign +
€ \[eu] u20AC Euro sign
€ \[Eu] u20AC variant Euro sign
¥ \[Ye] u00A5 yen sign
£ \[Po] u00A3 pound sign
¤ \[Cs] u00A4 currency sign
Units
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
° \[de] u00B0 degree sign +
‰ \[%0] u2030 per thousand, per mille sign
′ \[fm] u2032 arc minute sign +
″ \[sd] u2033 arc second sign
µ \[mc] u00B5 micro sign
ª \[Of] u00AA feminine ordinal indicator
º \[Om] u00BA masculine ordinal indicator
Logical symbols
Whether the two variants of the not sign differ in appearance or
spacing will depend on the device and font selected.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
∧ \[AN] u2227 logical and
∨ \[OR] u2228 logical or
¬ \[no] u00AC logical not + ***
¬ \[tno] u00AC text variant of \[no]
∃ \[te] u2203 there exists
∀ \[fa] u2200 for all
∋ \[st] u220B such that
∴ \[3d] u2234 therefore
∴ \[tf] u2234 therefore
| \[or] u007C bitwise or +
Mathematical symbols
\[Fn] also appears in subsection “Supplementary Latin letters”
above. Observe the two varieties of the plus-minus,
multiplication, and division signs; \[+-], \[mu], and \[di] are
normally drawn from the special font, but have regular (“text”)
font variants. Also be aware of three glyphs available in
special font variants that are normally drawn from regular fonts:
the plus, minus, and equals signs. Whether these variants differ
in appearance or spacing will depend on the device and font
selected.
Output Input Unicode Notes
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
½ \[12] u00BD one half symbol +
¼ \[14] u00BC one quarter symbol +
¾ \[34] u00BE three quarters symbol +
⅛ \[18] u215B one eighth symbol
⅜ \[38] u215C three eighths symbol
⅝ \[58] u215D five eighths symbol
⅞ \[78] u215E seven eighths symbol
¹ \[S1] u00B9 superscript one
² \[S2] u00B2 superscript two
³ \[S3] u00B3 superscript three
+ + u002B plus
+ \[pl] u002B special variant of plus +
- \[-] u002D minus
− \[mi] u2212 special variant of minus +
∓ \[-+] u2213 minus-plus
± \[+-] u00B1 plus-minus + ***
± \[t+-] u00B1 text variant of \[+-]
· \[pc] u00B7 centered period
⋅ \[md] u22C5 multiplication dot
× \[mu] u00D7 multiplication sign + ***
× \[tmu] u00D7 text variant of \[mu]
⊗ \[c*] u2297 circled times
⊕ \[c+] u2295 circled plus
÷ \[di] u00F7 division sign + ***
÷ \[tdi] u00F7 text variant of \[di]
⁄ \[f/] u2044 fraction slash
∗ \[**] u2217 mathematical asterisk +
≤ \[<=] u2264 less than or equal to +
≥ \[>=] u2265 greater than or equal to +
≪ \[<<] u226A much less than
≫ \[>>] u226B much greater than
= = u003D equals
= \[eq] u003D special variant of equals +
≠ \[!=] u003D_0338 not equals +
≡ \[==] u2261 equivalent +
≢ \[ne] u2261_0338 not equivalent
≅ \[=~] u2245 approximately equal to
≃ \[|=] u2243 asymptotically equal to +
∼ \[ap] u223C similar to, tilde operator +
≈ \[~~] u2248 almost equal to
≈ \[~=] u2248 almost equal to
∝ \[pt] u221D proportional to +
∅ \[es] u2205 empty set +
∈ \[mo] u2208 element of a set +
∉ \[nm] u2208_0338 not element of set
⊂ \[sb] u2282 proper subset +
⊄ \[nb] u2282_0338 not subset
⊃ \[sp] u2283 proper superset +
⊅ \[nc] u2283_0338 not superset
⊆ \[ib] u2286 subset or equal +
⊇ \[ip] u2287 superset or equal +
∩ \[ca] u2229 intersection, cap +
∪ \[cu] u222A union, cup +
∠ \[/_] u2220 angle
⊥ \[pp] u22A5 perpendicular
∫ \[is] u222B integral +
∫ \[integral] u222B integral ***
∑ \[sum] u2211 summation ***
∏ \[product] u220F product ***
∐ \[coproduct] u2210 coproduct ***
∇ \[gr] u2207 gradient +
√ \[sr] u221A radical sign, square root +
√ \[sqrt] u221A radical sign, square root
\[radicalex] --- radical extension ***
\[sqrtex] --- radical extension ***
⌈ \[lc] u2308 left ceiling +
⌉ \[rc] u2309 right ceiling +
⌊ \[lf] u230A left floor +
⌋ \[rf] u230B right floor +
∞ \[if] u221E infinity +
ℵ \[Ah] u2135 aleph symbol
ƒ \[Fn] u0192 lowercase f with hook, function
ℑ \[Im] u2111 blackletter I, imaginary part
ℜ \[Re] u211C blackletter R, real part
℘ \[wp] u2118 Weierstrass p
∂ \[pd] u2202 partial differential
ℏ \[-h] u210F h bar
ℏ \[hbar] u210F h bar
Greek glyphs
These glyphs are intended for technical use, not for typesetting
Greek language text; normally, the uppercase letters have upright
shape, and the lowercase ones are slanted.
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Α \[*A] u0391 uppercase alpha +
Β \[*B] u0392 uppercase beta +
Γ \[*G] u0393 uppercase gamma +
Δ \[*D] u0394 uppercase delta +
Ε \[*E] u0395 uppercase epsilon +
Ζ \[*Z] u0396 uppercase zeta +
Η \[*Y] u0397 uppercase eta +
Θ \[*H] u0398 uppercase theta +
Ι \[*I] u0399 uppercase iota +
Κ \[*K] u039A uppercase kappa +
Λ \[*L] u039B uppercase lambda +
Μ \[*M] u039C uppercase mu +
Ν \[*N] u039D uppercase nu +
Ξ \[*C] u039E uppercase xi +
Ο \[*O] u039F uppercase omicron +
Π \[*P] u03A0 uppercase pi +
Ρ \[*R] u03A1 uppercase rho +
Σ \[*S] u03A3 uppercase sigma +
Τ \[*T] u03A4 uppercase tau +
Υ \[*U] u03A5 uppercase upsilon +
Φ \[*F] u03A6 uppercase phi +
Χ \[*X] u03A7 uppercase chi +
Ψ \[*Q] u03A8 uppercase psi +
Ω \[*W] u03A9 uppercase omega +
α \[*a] u03B1 lowercase alpha +
β \[*b] u03B2 lowercase beta +
γ \[*g] u03B3 lowercase gamma +
δ \[*d] u03B4 lowercase delta +
ε \[*e] u03B5 lowercase epsilon +
ζ \[*z] u03B6 lowercase zeta +
η \[*y] u03B7 lowercase eta +
θ \[*h] u03B8 lowercase theta +
ι \[*i] u03B9 lowercase iota +
κ \[*k] u03BA lowercase kappa +
λ \[*l] u03BB lowercase lambda +
μ \[*m] u03BC lowercase mu +
ν \[*n] u03BD lowercase nu +
ξ \[*c] u03BE lowercase xi +
ο \[*o] u03BF lowercase omicron +
π \[*p] u03C0 lowercase pi +
ρ \[*r] u03C1 lowercase rho +
ς \[ts] u03C2 terminal lowercase sigma +
σ \[*s] u03C3 lowercase sigma +
τ \[*t] u03C4 lowercase tau +
υ \[*u] u03C5 lowercase upsilon +
ϕ \[*f] u03D5 lowercase phi +
χ \[*x] u03C7 lowercase chi +
ψ \[*q] u03C8 lowercase psi +
ω \[*w] u03C9 lowercase omega +
ϑ \[+h] u03D1 variant theta
φ \[+f] u03C6 variant phi (curly shape)
ϖ \[+p] u03D6 variant pi (similar to omega)
ϵ \[+e] u03F5 variant epsilon (lunate)
Playing card symbols
Output Input Unicode Notes
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
♣ \[CL] u2663 solid club suit
♠ \[SP] u2660 solid spade suit
♥ \[HE] u2665 solid heart suit
♦ \[DI] u2666 solid diamond suit
This document was written by James Clark ⟨jjc@jclark.com⟩, with
additions by Werner Lemberg ⟨wl@gnu.org⟩ and Bernd Warken
⟨groff-bernd.warken-72@web.de⟩, revised to use tbl(1) by Eric S.
Raymond ⟨esr@thyrsus.com⟩, and largely rewritten by G. Branden
Robinson ⟨g.branden.robinson@gmail.com⟩.
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and
Werner Lemberg, is the primary groff manual. Section “Using
Symbols” may be of particular note. You can browse it
interactively with “info '(groff) Using Symbols'”.
“An extension to the troff character set for Europe”, E.G.
Keizer, K.J. Simonsen, J. Akkerhuis; EUUG Newsletter, Volume 9,
No. 2, Summer 1989
The Unicode Standard ⟨http://www.unicode.org⟩
“7-bit Character Sets”
⟨https://www.aivosto.com/articles/charsets-7bit.html⟩ by Tuomas
Salste documents the inherent ambiguity and configurability (in
terms of variable code points) of the ASCII encoding standard.
groff(1), troff(1), groff(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 2020-12-18. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2020-12-09.) 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.rc1.56-5346-dirty3 December 2020 groff_char(7)
Pages that refer to this page: addftinfo(1), gpinyin(1), grodvi(1), groff(1), groffer(1), grolbp(1), grolj4(1), grops(1), grotty(1), hpftodit(1), pic(1), groff(7), groff_diff(7), groff_man(7), groff_man_style(7)
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