docutils supports adding a wide range of unicode glyphs into documents, while still keeping the source document readable and plain ASCII.

The character mappings are available in include files, and have to be included into the document before being useful.

For example, adding a horizontal arrow is done by including 'isoamsa.txt' which provides (amongst others) the replacement |hArr|. An example document might be:

Hav a look at the extensions available in the official docutils distribution for more information.