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# coveredCharacterSet

The character set containing all of the nominal characters that the font can render.

```
var coveredCharacterSet: CharacterSet { get }
```

## Discussion

The nominal character set is all of the entries in the font’s `cmap` table.

The number of glyphs supported by a given font is often larger than the number of characters contained in the character set returned by this method. This is because characters and glyphs have a many-to-many mapping, rather than a strict one-to-one correspondence. In some cases a character may be represented by multiple glyphs, such as an “é” which may be an “e” glyph combined with an acute accent glyph “´”. In other cases, a single glyph may represent multiple characters, as in the case of a ligature, or joined letter. For more information, see [`NSFont`](/documentation/AppKit/NSFont).

---

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