Mongolian Layout Requirements

The following terms and definitions apply to this standard.

Composition

The composition in the W3C Standard Format includes Mongolian characters, punctuation marks, and other marks related to the script.

Mongolian Space

Two spaces are used in Mongolian, U+0020 SPACE and the Mongolian space U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE.

Mongolian Symbols

This refers to various symbols used in Mongolian text. In formulating the Mongolian coding standard, some of the codes is used in the coding area of the Mongolian standard, while the rest are symbols used in the scripts of other ethnic groups, due to the fact that some symbols are borrowed from other ethnic groups.

Baseline

Baseline in Mongolian is called “Nirogo”. Mongolian writing is generally aligned to the baseline.

Writing Direction

It refers to the default direction of writing. For example, English writing direction is horizontal from top to bottom, while the Mongolian writing is vertical from left to right.

Text Width

Text width indicates the distance from the word at the left start to the word at the right end in a line in Mongolian, in the equivalent of the height of the horizontal English or Chinese text writing.

Text Height

Text height refers to the height of a Mongolian word, in equivalent of the width of the horizontal English or Chinese text writing.

Text Spacing

Text spacing refers to the gap between the Mongolian words.

Leftline and Rightline

As the Mongolian writing is vertical, the right line, the left line and the line through is equivalent to the underline and overline in the horizontal English or Chinese text writing.

The Mongolian writing direction is shown in Figure 1.

Mongolian has some specific requirements related to punctuation:

1. Commas, periods, exclamation marks, question marks, or colons cannot be used at the beginning of a line.
2. Opening brackets cannot be used at the end of a line.
3. Closing brackets cannot be used at the beginning of a line.
4. The colon and "《" of the opening bracket cannot be used separately, which means they must be used together and they are not allowed to be used at the beginning of a line.
5. Dash consists of two long separators, which cannot be separated, i.e. one cannot be used at the beginning of a line and the other is at the end. However, it is allowed to appear at the beginning of the line when a paragraph begins.

6. Mongolian names of Mongolian punctuation and writing direction are as shown in Figure 10, namely the writing direction is the same as that in the graph. Need to clarify the meaning of this bullet.

   

7. Mongolian punctuation should be centered vertically, as shown in Figure 11.

   

The “right line” in Mongolian writing is to the right of the text, and is used similarly to the underline of horizontal English and Chinese text. The “left line” is to the left of the text, and is used similarly to the overline of horizontal English and Chinese text. The strikethrough is a baseline-centered vertical line as shown in Figure 12.

Underline, overline and strikethrough in mixed composition with other languages are shown in Figure 13:

Lines alongside the text may break on the spaces between words. When doing so, the gaps introduced before suffixes by U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE and U+180E MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR should not be skipped. Even though there is a gap, suffixes are considered part of the word. See an example in the second word of Figure 14:

Due to the different height of Mongolian text, in order to ensure that every character is in fully displayed and the whole word looks beautiful, the height of each letter must keep in balance. The spaces between words must be different from the common gaps before suffixes, whose code point is U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE. See Figure 15:

Line-breaking should not split words. Figure 16 shows correct line-breaking, without breaking the Mongolian words. Figure 17 shows incorrect line-breaking for “” and “”.

Text alignment includes "left alignment", "horizontal centering", and “right alignment ”, as well as “top alignment”, “vertical centering”, “bottom alignment”and “top-bottom alignment”.

"Left alignment ", "horizontal centering" and “right alignment” are the alignment rules that apply inside a line. “Top alignment”, “horizontal centering”, “bottom alignment” and “top-bottom alignment” are the alignment rules in a page or a paragraph of a multi-line text.

Among "left alignment", "horizontal centering" and “right alignment”, “horizontal centering” is a default option which means that the Mongolian text will align based on its baseline axis. “Left alignment” means that the text will move left a certain distance, which shows obvious differences compared with the text after setting “horizontal center”. “Right alignment” means that the text will move right a certain distance after, which shows obvious differences compared with the text after setting “horizontal center”.

Among “Top alignment”, “vertical center”, “bottom alignment” and “top-bottom alignment”, “top-bottom alignment” is a default option which means that the words in the upper and the lower boundary of a multi-line text in a paragraph or a page are all aligned. Its alignment method is that spaces in the text are stretched in the same proportion. “Top alignment” means that the words in the upper boundary of a multi-line text in a paragraph or a page are all aligned without considering the alignment of the lower boundary and stretching the space between words. “Vertical center” means the words in the upper and the lower boundary of a multi-line text in a paragraph or a page do not need to align and leave the same blank under the condition of no-stretching space between words.

Mongolian is aligned to a baseline that runs down the center of the writing, and all text is aligned to this baseline as shown in Figure 18:

When mixed with other languages, the text in those languages should also be centre-aligned along the Mongolian baseline.

There is no obvious midcourt line in numbers and Latin. Therefore generally, half of the text height is regarded as a midcourt line position. When Mongolian script is mixed with numbers and Latin, the line of half of the text height should be aligned with Mongolian midcourt line. When font size of numbers is the same as Mongolian’s, it will be slightly larger, so some handling methods should be taken to avoid the problem, such as the methods listed in Figure 19.

For mixed arrangements with Chinese or Japanese, note the following:

1. Chinese and Japanese cannot be displayed in on their side. They must be displayed upright, as in horizontal Chinese or Japanese.
2. The center line of Chinese or Japanese text (the width in this case) needs to be aligned with the centre baseline of the Mongolian text.
3. Pay attention to the top alignment and bottom alignment of the Mongolian text. In the same line, the mixed display of Mongolian and Chinese needs attention to produce a balanced alignment. When displayed, it should stretch space, but empty distance or space should not be added in Chinese text. Does this mean that no inter-character spacing should be applied to the Chinese?
4. Mongolian is smaller than Chinese or Japanese in the same font size, so some handling methods should be taken to avoid the problem, such as methods listed in Figure 20.

The display of these controls needs to pay attention to the direction of the output. That is to say, the primary display of the number 1, 2, 3, etc. is from left to right. The effect of the following code is as shown in Figure 21. Note how the text is centered on the vertical midline. The separator dots for the numbering are not centre-aligned. We should probably mention that. Also, shouldn't the numbers be rotated counter-clockwise?

In general, bookbinding is on the left side, as shown in Figure 22:

The direction of page turning is to the left, as shown in Figure 23:

Generally, landscape is the default Mongolian format, as shown in Figure 24.

By default, pages should scroll from left to right, as shown in Figure 25.

When the amount of text exceeds the prescribed space available, a scroll bar needs to be displayed. The default display position of the scroll bar is along the bottom of the corresponding space. (The simultaneous display of both horizontal and vertical scroll bars has not been installed).

Columns in Mongolian text should be divided vertically.

The illustrations here include ordinary picture formats, textboxes, charts, media objects and so on, all of which are called illustrations in what follows. There are many ways (as shown in Figure 28) of mixing the arrangements of text and illustrations but, no matter which way is used, some principles need to be obeyed.

1. The illustration cannot be rotated, that is, the original illustration is inserted just as it is. The illustration cannot be rotated into the vertical one just because of vertical text.
2. The Mongolian script around the inserted illustrations cannot be broken inside the word. The rules of the beginning and end of lines are the same as the original ones.

When setting writing-mode:tb-lr using CSS (grammar will have a little difference according to various browsers), the table will support vertical display feature of Mongolian script. When setting default options for the text in a table, it will display horizontally centered, that is, the upper and the lower center lines of the table cell will align at the center line of the baseline of the Mongolian text, as shown in Figure 29.

In the Mongolian format, page numbers should be displayed on the upper or lower side of the page.

The select box appearing in the following HTML code should be displayed as shown in Figure 32. According to the default setting, the scroll bar is at the bottom and starts at the left. To see the contents at the end of the list, it scrolls from left to right. The scrolling of the mouse wheel should be in accordance with illustration in Figure 33. While selecting a column, the selected text and the selected background color should conform to the principle of aligning to the Mongolian vertically-centered baseline (see the descriptions in Figure 31).

Textarea is an important control, and is required in the text input, edit, and display. Scrollbar movement accords with requirements of the select control in 9.4.1 Select. The display and moving direction of the cursor should be consistent with the standard for cursor movement in 6.2.3 Cursor movement rules. In some browsers, there are functions for stretching the size of the textarea. The stretching icon should be in the lower right corner, and the textarea scaling accords with the mouse dragging. The rows and cols attribute of textarea are the opposite of those in horizontal text. Its specific attributes are as the following: rows {int} : showing the column number and cols {int} : showing the row number.

The label control mainly considers text midcourt line aligning principles. ( See the descriptions in 8.4 Baselines, line height, etc.). The label display for the following code is shown in Figure 35.

As shown in Figure 36, which is an example fieldset generation with the following code, the components are aligned along the centred-vertical Mongolian baseline.