Common Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide

To Include a Special Character

  1. Refer to Chapter 6, Summary of Special Character Entities, to determine the entity name for the character you want to display. Also, note whether it is a built-in special character.

  2. If the character is not a built-in special character, add the following two lines among your other entity declarations (where entity-name is a meaningful name to you):

    <!entity entity-name FILE  "helpchar.ent">  &entity-name;
     &entity-name;
    

    Also, add this line to your helptag.opt file:

    search=/usr/dt/dthelp/dthelptag

    If the character is built into HelpTag, you can skip step 2.

  3. Wherever you want to display the special character, enter its entity reference:

    &entity-name;

Examples

The entity for the copyright symbol (©) is a built-in special character, so all you have to do to display it is use this entity:

&copy;

To display the uppercase greek letter sigma, you must first include the helpchar.ent file (at the top of your help volume with your other entity declarations) as shown here:

<!entity  SpecialCharacterEntities  FILE   "helpchar.ent">  
&SpecialCharacterEntities;

Then you can place the following entity reference where the sigma character is to appear:

&Usigma;

As with any entity, case is not significant in the entity names for special characters.

See Also