From: Claus Färber (list-ietf-wg-apps-usefor@faerber.muc.de)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 14:47:00 CDT
Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk> schrieb/wrote:
> The word we want has to describe the object that will appear on the
> display as a single entity (but which might, after I18N has happened,
> consist of a base character with added decorations). I agree that column
> could be misleading in some contexts. I see that "glyph" and "symbol" have
> been suggested, and I would be happy with either if the WG agrees (mildly
> prefer "glyph" over "symbol"). Or is there some other standard word which
> the Unicode people use?
Glyph is defined by Unicode as the 'object that will appear on the
display as a single entitiy' but that is not what we really want. Glyphs
can be diacritics, ligatures, etc.
UTR#17[1] lists several examples where a single character (sequence) has
a different number of glyphs depnding on the font.
Symbol is much too overloaded and not clearly defined.
Granted, the term "column" can be misleading, XBD/IEEE Std 1003.1-
2001[2] uses the term "column position".
Claus
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[1] http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr17/#Characters+vs.+Glyphs
[2] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/xrat/xbd_chap03.html
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