From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Sun Jun 04 2006 - 08:14:29 CDT
On Sat, 3 Jun 2006, Steve Summit wrote:
> On the one hand it could be argued that, since these references
> have nothing to do with computer representation, there would be
> no reason for them to touch on any Unicode mappings or definitions.
However, even without considering the ubiquous use of computers that you
mention, the difference between characters and glyphs exists and has
existed since the dawn of writing. An exact definition of writing rules
identifies the characters to be used, as abstract entities, and may
include additional rules on glyph selection.
Thus, Unicode can be used as a standard that defines abstract characters,
even if we are not interested in any computerized processing or even the
code numbers. In practice, though, the code numbers are often the most
convenient way to refer to characters.
-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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