Re: glyph for English

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 11:27 AM, WCAG 2.0 Comment Form <nobody@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
> Name: Makoto Ueki
> Email: makoto.ueki@gmail.com
> Affiliation: JIS Working Group
> Document: W2
> Item Number: Success Criterion 1.4.8
> Part of Item:
> Comment Type: question
> Summary of Issue: glyph for English
> Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
> In English, does glyph include %, $, &, @, # and so on? For "33%" as an example, "33" is character and "%" is glyph?
>
> Proposed Change:
> Just to confirm the answers from WCAG WG.
>
>

================================
Response from the Working Group
================================
The differences between these terms can be somewhat confusing. Perhaps
the following definitions (from wikipedia) will help.

- a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes
include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation
marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing
systems.

- a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme

- a glyph is the shape given in a particular typeface to a specific
grapheme or symbol

Another useful resource that may help in understanding this topic is:

FAQ: Character encodings for beginners:
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-what-is-encoding

In your example, all of the items mentioned (%, $, &, @, #, 33%) would
be both characters and glyphs because the association between their
shape and the information the shapes represent are intact. If however,
you were to create a font where the character mapping for the letter
"b" was associated with a glyph that was a picture of a fish, then you
would have something that is a glyph, but not a character.

Another resource that may be helpful is
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AD%97%E4%BD%93

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact


On behalf of the WCAG Working Group

Received on Monday, 6 October 2008 05:00:56 UTC