5.3.1 Character names

The character name in an encoding file is an arbitrary sequence of nonblank characters (except it can't include a %, since that starts a comment). Conventionally, it consists of only lowercase letters, except where an uppercase letter is actually involved. (For example, eacute is a lowercase e with an acute accent; Eacute is an uppercase E with an acute accent.

If a character code has no equivalent character in the font, i.e., the font table has a "blank spot", you should use the name .notdef for that code. This is the only name you can usefully give more than once. If any other name is used more than once, the results are undefined.

To avoid unnecessary proliferation of character names, you should use names from existing `.enc' files where possible. All the `.enc' files we have created are distributed in the `data' directory.