gpinyin
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 2 July 2023
Index
Return to Main Contents
Name
gpinyin - use Hanyu Pinyin Chinese in
groff
documents
.nr d-fallback 1
.nr d-fallback 1
Synopsis
[
file~...]
-h
--help
-v
--version
Description
gpinyin
is a preprocessor for
that facilitates use of Hanyu Pinyin in
files.
Pinyin is a method for writing the Mandarin Chinese language with the
Latin alphabet.
Mandarin consists of more than four hundred base syllables,
each spoken with one of five different tones.
Changing the tone applied to the syllable generally alters the meaning
of the word it forms.
In Pinyin,
a syllable is written in the Latin alphabet and a numeric tone indicator
can be appended to each syllable.
Each
inpu-file
is a file name or the character
[lq]
-[rq]
to indicate that the standard input stream should be read.
As usual,
the argument
[lq]
--[rq]
can be used in order to force interpretation of all remaining arguments
as file names,
even if an
inpu-file
argument begins with a
[lq]
-[rq].
-h
and
--help
display a usage message,
while
-v
and
--version
show version information;
all exit afterward.
Pinyin sections
Pinyin sections in
groff
files are enclosed by two
.pinyin
requests with different arguments.
The starting request is
-
.pinyin start
or
-
.pinyin begin
and the ending request is
-
.pinyin stop
or
-
.pinyin end
.
Syllables
In Pinyin,
each syllable is represented by one to six letters drawn from the
fift-two uppe- and lowercase letters of the Unicode basic Latin
character set,
plus the letter [lq]U[rq] with dieresis (umlaut) in both cases[em]in
other words,
the members of the set [lq][a[en]zA[en]Z[:u][:U]][rq].
In
groff
input,
all basic Latin letters are written as themselves.
The [lq]u with dieresis[rq] can be written as
[lq][:u][rq]
in lowercase or
[lq][:U][rq]
in uppercase.
Within
.pinyin
sections,
gpinyin
supports the form
[lq]ue[rq]
for lowercase and the forms
[lq]Ue[rq]
and
[lq]UE[rq]
for uppercase.
Tones
Each syllable has exactly one of five
tones.
The fifth tone is not explicitly written at all,
but each of the first through fourth tones is indicated with a diacritic
above a specific vowel within the syllable.
In a
gpinyin
source file,
these tones are written by adding a numeral in the range 0 to 5 after
the syllable.
The tone numbers 1 to 4 are transformed into accents above vowels in the
output.
The tone numbers 0 and 5 are synonymous.
[The tone mark table is omitted from this rendering of the man page
because the selected output device [lq].T][rq] lacks the character
repertoire to display it.
Try another output device.]
The neutral tone number can be omitted from a wor-final syllable,
but not otherwise.
Authors
gpinyin
was written by
Bernd Warken
See also
Useful documents on the World Wide Web related to Pinyin include
-
Pinyin to Unicode
O-line Chinese Tools
Pinyin.info: a guide to the writing of Mandarin Chinese in romanization
[lq]Where do the tone marks go?[rq]
pinyin.txt
from the CJK macro package for TeX]
and
pinyin.sty
from the CJK macro package for TeX]
and
explain how to view
roff
documents.
and
are comprehensive references covering the language elements of GNU
troff and the available glyph repertoire,
respectively.
Index
- Name
-
- Synopsis
-
- Description
-
- Pinyin sections
-
- Syllables
-
- Tones
-
- Authors
-
- See also
-
|
|
- Running on 
-
:
