# pdfmathaccents

**Version 1.0 (2026/07/27)**

Type accented mathematical symbols directly in your source file using
Unicode combining characters. With pdfmathaccents loaded, the
two-character sequence `x` + U+0302 (combining circumflex accent) —
which your editor displays as an accented letter — is typeset in math
mode as `\hat x`, and likewise for fifteen other combining characters
(grave, acute, tilde, macron, breve, dot, diaeresis, caron, ring,
vector arrow, and more).

This is the pdfLaTeX companion of the
[luamathaccents](https://github.com/NittanyLion/luamathaccents)
package. Under LuaLaTeX, use luamathaccents instead; it supports more
combining characters and is less invasive. pdfmathaccents works by
making letters and digits math-active so that they can inspect the
following token — pdfTeX cannot rewrite the input line the way LuaTeX
does.

## Usage

```latex
\usepackage{pdfmathaccents}
```

The conversion is active from that point on, in math mode, for base
characters that are ASCII letters or digits. `\PdfMathAccentsOff` and
`\PdfMathAccentsOn` disable and re-enable it mid-document.

Only decomposed (NFD) sequences are recognized. If a precomposed (NFC)
accented character — the usual result of an editor silently
normalizing a combining sequence — shows up in math mode, the package
issues a warning naming the likely cause before the standard LaTeX
error that follows.

See `pdfmathaccents-doc.pdf` for the full list of supported combining
characters and some caveats.

Development happens at <https://github.com/NittanyLion/pdfmathaccents>;
please report bugs there.

## Installation

The package is contained in the single file `pdfmathaccents.sty`. For
a TDS-compliant installation, place the files as:

- `tex/latex/pdfmathaccents/pdfmathaccents.sty`
- `doc/latex/pdfmathaccents/pdfmathaccents-doc.tex`
- `doc/latex/pdfmathaccents/pdfmathaccents-doc.pdf`
- `doc/latex/pdfmathaccents/README.md`

The documentation is built with `pdflatex pdfmathaccents-doc.tex` (run
twice).

## License

Copyright 2026 Joris Pinkse.

This work may be distributed and/or modified under the conditions of
the [LaTeX Project Public License](https://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt),
either version 1.3c of this license or (at your option) any later
version. This work has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained"; the
current maintainer is Joris Pinkse (pinkse@gmail.com).
