H.4 Conventions: Fonts and symbols
The following table explains the text formatting conventions used in this manual:
Font |
Convention |
---|---|
Bold |
Bold characters indicate text in a window, other than the window title. Such text includes menus, menu options, buttons, radio box options, or explanatory labels. For example:
|
Italic |
Italic characters indicate a placeholder for some actual text to be provided by the user or system. For example:
Italic characters are also used for emphasis. For example:
|
Monospace |
Monospace characters indicate text that the user enters without change, or text (such as messages) output by the system. For example:
|
The following table explains the symbols used in this manual:
Symbol |
Convention |
---|---|
| |
In syntax explanations, a vertical bar separates multiple items, and has the meaning of OR. For example: A|B|C means A, or B, or C. |
{ } |
In syntax explanations, curly brackets indicate that only one of the enclosed items is to be selected. For example: {A|B|C} means only one of A, or B, or C. |
[ ] |
In syntax explanations, square brackets indicate that the enclosed item or items are optional. For example: [A] means that you can specify A or nothing. [B|C] means that you can specify B, or C, or nothing. |
... |
In coding, an ellipsis (...) indicates that one or more lines of coding are not shown for purposes of brevity. In syntax explanations, an ellipsis indicates that the immediately preceding item can be repeated as many times as necessary. For example: A, B, B, ... means that, after you specify A, B, you can specify B as many times as necessary. |
- Conventions for permitted characters
-
In most cases, only the following characters are permitted as syntax elements (if other characters are permitted, the manual will state this explicitly):
Type
Definition
Alphabetic characters
A to Z, a to z
Upper-case alphabetic characters
A to Z
Lower-case alphabetic characters
a to z
Numeric characters
0 to 9
Alphanumeric characters
A to Z, a to z, 0 to 9
Symbols
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / :
; < = > @ [ \ ] ^ ` _ { | } ~ ?
space