gpinyin

An option is breaking, when the program just writes the information that was asked for and then stops. All other arguments will be ignored by that. The breaking options are here

-h | --help

Print help information with a short explanation of options to standard output.

-v | --version

Print version information to standard output.

So far, there are only filespec and breaking options.

filespec arguments are file names or the minus sign - for standard input. As usual, the argument -- can be used in order to let all following arguments mean file names, even if the names begin with a minus character -.

The Chinese language is based on about 411 defined syllables, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_table.

In Pinyin, each syllable consists of 1 to 6 European-like letters, the normal ASCII characters in upper and lower case, the only unusual characters are the U dieresis (umlaut) in both cases, i.e. [a-zA-ZüÜ].

In the groff gpinyin input, all ASCII letters are written as usual. But the u/U dieresis can be written as either as \['u] or ue in lower case or \['U], Ue, UE in upper case.

Each syllable has exactly one of 5 defined tones. The 5th tone is not written at all, but each tone 1 to 4 is written as an accent above a defined vowel within the syllable.

In the source file, these tones are written by adding a number 0 to 5 after the syllable name.

In each writing, the tone numbers 1 to 4 are transformed into accents above vowels.

The 1st tone is the horizontal macron \[a-] ¯ , similar to a minus or sub character, but on top of the vowel. In each source file, write the 1st tone as syllable1.

The 2nd tone is the accute accent \[aa] ´. In each source file, write the 2nd tone as syllable2.

The 3rd tone is the caron sign, \[ah] ˇ , which looks a bit like a small v above the vowel. In each source file, write the 3rd tone as syllable3.

The 4th tone is the grave accent \[ga] `. In each source file, write the 4th tone as syllable4.

The 5th tone is the no-tone. The numbers 0 and 5 can be used for the (no-tone). The no-tone number can be omitted, when the syllable is the end of some word. But within a word of syllables, one of the no-tone numbers 0 or 5 must be written.