Keld writes....
The term "glyph" has a distinct meaning in ISO terminology,
and it is very different form the ISO term "character".
The glyphs are representing the outlook while the character is
representing the meaning. For example the character "a" (LATIN
SMALL LETTER A) may be presented by a number of glyphs:
courier a, Times a, etc, and there is a distinctive difference between
the outlook of the italic Times "a" and the normal Times "a"
....
But, if that is the distinction (and, I agree, that is what ISO has said
that its definitions are), then is it not the case that
(i) By making the decision that idiographic characters that "look the
same" (i.e., have the same glyphs) are coded the same way, IS 10646
becomes a "glyph standard" not a "character standard" for the subset of
languages involved?
(ii) By maintaining a distinction between code positions for
characters with the same appearance in most alphabetic languages, IS
10646 really is a "character [set] standard" for those languages, since
codings are assigned by meaning?
Aha. A duck that barks.
Is the first of these points the key to the point that Mashataka Ohta is
trying to make?
john