What does glyph mean in the Chrome browser?

Question

In the Chrome browser using the developer tools, on the Computed tab there is a section at the bottom named Rendered Fonts. In that section there is an item which lists the font type that is rendered and it states # glyphs. The # represents a number from 0 and up. What does glyph actually mean? Is it the number of characters? See screenshot below. I tried searching the web but didn't find a conclusive answer.

Answer 1

Yes, it appears that this describes the number of characters (glyphs) that were produced from the given font.

• Repeated characters are counted separately ("aabb" = 4 glyphs).
• Blank spaces are included ("a b" = 3 glyphs).
• Ligatures are counted as two separate glyphs ("off" = 3 glyphs even with ff ligature).
• Child elements are not counted (foo<span>bar</span> = 3 glyps).

The purpose of the "Rendered Fonts" pane appears to be to show what font substitutions have taken place. For example, even with font-family: Arial, Chrome on Windows 7 substitutes SimSun for Chinese characters; inspecting this JSBin gives "Arial—8 glyphs, SimSun—2 glyphs".