5.19.6 Special Fonts

Special fonts are those that GNU troff searches, in mounting position order, when it cannot find a requested glyph in the selected font. Typically, special fonts contain unstyled glyphs and are declared as such in their description files; see Font Description File Format. The “Symbol” and “Zapf Dingbats” fonts of the PostScript and PDF standards are examples. Ordinarily, only typesetters have special fonts.

GNU troff’s special and fspecial requests permit a document to supplement the set of fonts searched for glyphs. See Using Symbols.

Request: .special [s1 s2 …]
Request: .fspecial f [s1 s2 …]

special designates each font sn as special. Initially, this list is empty.

fspecial designates each font as special only when font f is selected. Initially, this list is empty.

Invoking special or fspecial again overwrites the previous list; without arguments, the relevant list is made empty. Special fonts are searched in the order they appear as arguments. Each font sn is mounted, and not automatically unmounted if superseded by a subsequent special or fspecial request.