Fonts, Characters, and Glyphs
This section examines the meaning of the terms font, character, and glyph.
A Unicode character point is a numerical representation of a conceptual character. For example, suppose that you refer to “uppercase A.” If you are familiar with English, you know which character is being referred to. However, you can’t say with certainty exactly how this conceptual character will be displayed onscreen or on paper. This is where glyphs and fonts come in.
For the purposes of this discussion, a font is a set of glyphs. A glyph is a particular visual representation of a character. Any character, such as the uppercase A, can be displayed in any number of visual appearances.
This truth is illustrated using Scalable Vector Graphics ...
Get Sams Teach Yourself XML in 10 Minutes now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
