[split] Diplomatic ciphers

[-JKP-]

If it's a group of characters that function together as a unit, there's nothing wrong with calling it a sequence or some other term that expresses its "grouped" status, but to refer to it as an individual character is very misleading, especially in the world of ciphers where terms like many-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many are accepted concepts and where the concept of "individual character" does not mean multiple characters.

You could use symbol-sequence, combination-glyph, token, or some other term that expresses the multiplicity of the grouped symbols. There are many ways it could be expressed more clearly.


In ciphers, this distinction matters, because many-to-one is a way of deliberately obfuscating the underlying text. When you express one character with three, it's a way of hiding the information and making it harder to decrypt.

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JKP: You could view the 4o as three characters joined up:

<  |  o

However I describe it as one character as it is one unit. I hope this makes it a little clearer.

You didn't say "one unit", you said "individual character". I think "one unit" is a better way of describing it.