Before talking about glyph, let me confirm the definition of “character” again. Since this series is about the world of fonts, a character is simply something that is associated with a code point in a character code (specifically Unicode). Therefore, the character “辻” is the same whether it has the two-dot or one-dot “Shinnyo” radical.

There are times, however, when we want to treat them separately. That’s where the concept of “glyph” comes into play. Actually, there are two different definitions of “glyph.” Perhaps a more general explanation would be something like “the specific shape of a character.” This is certainly not incorrect, and I sometimes use the term “glyph” in that sense myself, but in this series I would like to adopt a different definition. I suppose it’s something like “an abstract concept regarding the shape of a character, distinguished from the character itself and on a different level.”

My apologies. The story suddenly became harder to understand, but it will become easier to understand very soon. There is a standard called Adobe-Japan1 for the glyphs included in Japanese OpenType fonts, and each glyph is assigned a unique number called a CID (Character ID). In applications that support OpenType features, such as Adobe Illustrator, you can switch between these views.

In such cases, we will refer to those associated with the glyph standard CID as “glyphs.” Therefore, in AXIS Round 50 and TP Mincho, the shape of CID 8267 (the character “辻” with the two-dot “Shinnyo” radical) is completely different, but it is the same glyph. I will talk about Latin fonts next time.

Adobe-Japan1-7 Character Collection

https://github.com/adobe-type-tools/Adobe-Japan1/blob/master/README-JP.md

（mm）