COMPUTERS AND CHARACTERS
Every language, no matter how complex, relies on characters. A character is defined as the smallest component of a written language that has semantic value. Characters are typically grouped by language into character sets.
A character is an abstract concept. “Capital letter A” is a character. So is “Hangul letter rieul-tikeut” and “Ethiopic syllable lu.” A character can be used in one language or many languages. It might even be a dollar sign or a mathematical symbol.
You cannot see a character or print a character. What you see on your computer screen is known as a glyph, as shown here for the character A. A font is a collection of glyphs.
One Character, Many Glyphs
| The character: | The capital letter A |
| And its ... |
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