Category: Announcements

The CSS Logical Properties and Values spec allows authors to specify margins, captions, etc. using declarations that are valid without change whether text is horizontal LTR or RTL, or vertical LR/RL. Values have names such as -start/-end, rather than -left/-right.

These new tests look at support for values in RTL and vertical LR/RL contexts. They cover block size, margins, padding, border width/style/color/radius, caption side, & floats.

The test results, and links to the tests themselves, can be found at
https://w3c.github.io/i18n-tests/results/css-logical.html

The W3C Internationalization Activity has just published First Public Working Drafts for 21 documents that explore gaps in language support on the Worldwide Web. Some of these documents are from individual contributors, whereas others are the result of work in a language enablement task force. The list below points to the location of the FPWD and also to the relevant group home page or to the relevant GitHub repository where the work was done.

We are looking for expert contributors who can help us move this work forward by answering questions, documenting gaps in support, and creating tests. For more information about the program, see this 15 minute overview (slides).

Arabic & Persian Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/alreq-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/alreq/

Chinese Layout Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/clreq-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/clreq/

Ethiopic Layout Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/elreq-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/elreq/

Dutch Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/latn-nl-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/eurlreq/

Georgian Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/geor-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/eurlreq/

Modern Greek Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/grek-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/eurlreq/

Hungarian Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/latn-hu-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/eurlreq/

Bengali Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/beng-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/iip/

Devanagari Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/deva-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/iip/

Gurmukhi Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/guru-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/iip/

Gujarati Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/gujr-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/iip/

Tamil Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/taml-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/iip/

Japanese Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/jpan-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/jlreq/

Inuktitut & Cree Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/cans-iu-cr-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/amlreq/

Cherokee Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/cher-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/amlreq/

Lao Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/laoo-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/sealreq/

Khmer Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/khmr-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/sealreq/

Javanese Script Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/java-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/sealreq/

Thai Script Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/thai-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/sealreq/

Mongolian Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/mong-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/mlreq/

Tibetan Gap Analysis
https://www.w3.org/TR/tibt-gap/
https://github.com/w3c/tlreq/

The Internationalization Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Rules for Simple Placement of Japanese Ruby. This document provides a simple set of rules for placement of ruby text in Japanese typography that can be used as a minimum baseline for implementers and specification writers. It was developed by the JLReq (Japanese Layout) Task Force as a companion to Requirements for Japanese Text Layout 日本語組版処理の要件（日本語版）.

Ruby is the name given to the small annotations in Japanese content that are rendered alongside base text, usually to provide a pronunciation guide, but sometimes to provide other information.

The W3C today launched the Internationalization Initiative to expand core work in further internationalizing the Web. “Supporting the W3C Internationalization Initiative with funding or expertise is a vital way that our Web community creates the future of the global Web,” said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. W3C thanks Alibaba, Apple, Advanced Publishing Lab (Keio University), Monotype, and The Paciello Group who have stepped up as Founding Sponsors. Read about the Sponsorship Program and the press release and testimonials.

The Internationalization and Unicode® Conference (IUC) is the annual conference of the Unicode Consortium where experts and industry leaders gather to map the future of internationalization, ignite new ideas and present the latest in technologies and best practices for creation, management, and testing of global, Web, and multilingual software solutions.

The deadline for speaker submissions is Friday, 24 March, so don’t forget to send in an abstract if you want to speak at the conference.

The I18N Working Group has published two Note documents: Requirements for Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0, and Metadata for the Multilingual Web – Usage Scenarios and Implementations. The documents describe input to the development of, and usage scenarios for, ITS 2.0. The documents are not finished, but the group reached consensus to stop work on these specifications. They are being published as Working Group Notes for archival reasons, and show the latest snapshot of the document. In comparison to the previous working drafts, these documents only contain editorial changes. Further work items in relation to ITS 2.0 are being discussed in the ITS Interest Group.

This document points browser implementers and specification developers to information about how to support typographic features of scripts or writing systems from around the world, and also points to relevant information in specifications, to tests, and to useful articles and papers. It is not exhaustive, and will be added to constantly.

International text layout and typography index

We expect CSS specifications will point to this index in future where developers need additional information.

One of the new features in this FPWD is the addition of links to a github repository which tracks relevant discussion threads. That issue list contains pointers to threads of two kinds:

1. requests for information about how a script works
2. threads discussing implementation issues for typographic features in specs and browsers.

In the past it has been difficult to keep track of such questions, and hopefully this will help.

You can access the ‘tracker items’ by clicking on a link in the typography index (in which case you’ll see a prefiltered list specific to the section in the document), or you can go directly to the github repo. Here you can filter information by kind, by typographic feature, and by script.

The i18n WG welcomes suggestions for inclusion in the typography index, such as useful, reliable information sources and threads to track.

The W3C Internationalization Checker is a free service for web authors and developers that checks web pages and provides:

• a table listing key international settings for a page, such as character encoding, language declarations, and text direction.
• a list of errors, warnings and helpful suggestions about the page, with pointers to resources where you can learn more.

Version 2 of the checker moves away from checking against particular specifications to checking how a page will work in a browser. For the most part, it assumes that pages will be parsed using an HTML5 compliant parser. Pages served as application/xhtml+xml have some significant differences with regards to character encoding and language declarations, however, and these are taken into account if the checker detects that the page being checked is served as XML.

See the change log for detailed information about changes. In summary, 18 new checks were added, and the messages for 11 checks were significantly updated.

In addition, the following new rows were added to the information table:

• All language tags: lists all language tags used in the page. If you click on any of the language tags listed, you are taken to the Language Subtag Lookup tool, which provides information about validity of the subtags used, lists their meaning, and provides additional usage tips.
• Unicode control codes: lists directional controls used in the document, with a frequency count for each. The list is divided to reflect actual characters vs. numeric character references vs. named character references.
• Notable attributes: lists attributes used that are typically associated with features needed by an international audience.
• Notable elements: the same, but for elements.

Please let us know about bugs and missing features using the feedback form.

The W3C HTML5 Validator has been enhanced with functionality that detects the overall language of a page. The validator can currently detect a little over 50 languages, but more will be added over time.

This makes it possible to compare the language of the content in a page with language declarations, and issue warnings if the lang attribute does not match the language of content, if no lang attribute is given at all, or if a language using a right-to-left script is detected but a dir attribute is missing from the html tag.

For more information on the lang attribute, see the Why use the language attribute? article, or Declaring the overall language of a page in the technique index.