The rtkinenc package is functionally similar to the standard LaTeX package inputenc: both set up active characters so that an input character outside the range of 7-bit visible ASCII is coverted into one or more corresponding LaTeX commands. The main difference lies in that rtkinenc allows the user to specify a fallback procedure to use when the text command corresponding to some input character isn't available.

Names of commands in rtkinenc have been selected so that it can read inputenc encoding definition files, and the aim is that rtkinenc should be backwards compatible with inputenc. rtkinenc is not a new version of inputenc though, nor is it part of standard LaTeX.

For an example of how rtkinenc is used, the user may look at the tclldoc class.