+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>encoding <replaceable>encoding-name</replaceable></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ This directive must be at the very beginning of the file, and it
+ specifies the character encoding used in the entire file. If
+ omitted, the encoding <literal>ISO-8859-1</literal> is assumed.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For example, one of the test files found at
+ <literal>test/rusmarc/tab/string.chr</literal> contains the following
+ encoding directive:
+ <screen>
+ encoding koi8-r
+ </screen>
+ and the test file
+ <literal>test/charmap/string.utf8.chr</literal> is encoded
+ in UTF-8:
+ <screen>
+ encoding utf-8
+ </screen>
+ </para>
+ </listitem></varlistentry>