NAME
utf8trans - Transliterate UTF-8 characters according to a table
SYNOPSIS
utf8trans \kx
charmap [file]...
DESCRIPTION
utf8trans transliterates characters in the specified files (or
standard input, if they are not specified) and writes the output to
standard output. All input and output is in the UTF-8 encoding.
This program is usually used to render characters in Unicode text files
as some markup escapes or ASCII transliterations.
(It is not intended for general charset conversions.)
It provides functionality similar to the character maps
in XSLT 2.0 (XML Stylesheet Language Transformations, version 2.0).
OPTIONS
-m, --modify
Modifies the given files in-place with their transliterated output,
instead of sending it to standard output.
This option is useful for efficient transliteration of many files
at once.
--help
Show brief usage information and exit.
--version
Show version and exit.
USAGE
The translation is done according to the rules in the character
map, named in the file charmap. It
has the following format:
1.
Each line represents a translation entry, except for
blank lines and comment lines, which are ignored.
2.
Any amount of whitespace (space or tab) may precede
the start of an entry.
3.
Comment lines begin with #.
Everything on the same line is ignored.
4.
Each entry consists of the Unicode codepoint of the
character to translate, in hexadecimal, followed
one space or tab, followed by the translation
string, up to the end of the line.
5.
The translation string is taken literally, including any
leading and trailing spaces (except the delimeter between the codepoint
and the translation string), and all types of characters. The newline
at the end is not included.
The above format is intended to be restrictive, to keep
utf8trans simple. But if a XML-based format is desired,
there is a xmlcharmap2utf8trans script that
comes with the docbook2X distribution, that converts character
maps in XSLT 2.0 format to the utf8trans format.
LIMITATIONS
utf8trans does not work with binary files, because malformed
UTF-8 sequences in the input are substituted with
U+FFFD characters. However, null characters in the input
are handled correctly. This limitation may be removed in the future.
There is no way to include a newline or null in the substitution string.
AUTHOR
Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.
