If set, this variable specifies a search path list for character entity files that Arbortext Editor reads on startup. The files contain the full array of character entities to be used for display and publishing, their definitions, respective character sets and code points. The default entity file charent.cf is located in Arbortext-path\lib.

The file paths are searched in the order specified, and if a character entity is defined in more than one file, the last definition is used. Refer to the comments in the charent.cf file for additional information.

This environment variable accepts the %H and %Dsymbolic parameters for path list variables. Include the default configuration file by specifying %D as part of the path list to display the standard entities.

By default, Arbortext Editor searches for the charent.cf file in the directories you specify. If your character entity is specified in a file with a different name, you must specify the file name in the path. As an example, you may want to redefine the Greek entities in %ISOgrk1 to display using Windows Code Page 1253 fonts instead of the default Postscript symbol font. You could specify the path list as follows:

The %D supplies the default path to Arbortext-path\lib\charent.cf.

If you want to make charent.cf automatically available, use the Arbortext-path\custom\lib directory to load it upon startup (avoiding the need to set an environment variable).

To make several charent.cf files readily available, you should implement a series of custom\lib subdirectories and then set the APTCUSTOM environment variable to a path list. Refer to Setting paths for new character set files for more information.

Note that you cannot include the charent.cf file or similar font configuration files in the lib subdirectory of a zipped custom directory. These files are processed before a zipped custom directory when Arbortext Editor starts up, so the files cannot be processed when deployed in this way.