Note: This Activity Statement covers the period from May to October 2011.
The goal of the Internationalization (I18n) Activity is to ensure that W3C's formats and protocols are open to all of the world's languages, writing systems, character codes and local conventions.
I18n advises W3C Working Groups, reviews W3C publications, coordinates with the Unicode Technical Committee, the IETF, ISO committees, and the localization industry. I18n increases awareness of internationalization issues via conferences, workshops, articles and Working Group Notes. I18n provides upfront input to Working Groups and reviews Last Call Working Drafts on a wide range of topics, including Unicode character normalization, international typographic requirements, script issues in text-to-speech implementations, internationalization and localization requirements for schemas, usage scenarios and requirements for the internationalization of Web services, implementation of international resource identifiers, and many more.
For the curious, "I18n" is shorthand for the first, last, and 18 middle characters in the word "Internationalization."
The Core Working Group continued to provide a variety of formal and informal advice to W3C Working Groups and external parties, including specification reviews. For example, the group raised comments on and discussed features of the WOFF, HTML5, and Contacts API specifications. It also discussed normalization in CSS, and raised the topic for discussion by the TAG. Through group intervention, the CSS3 Ruby specification was moved from CR back to Working Draft status, so that outstanding issues can be analysed and the new markup model of HTML5 taken into account.
A new version of Working with Time Zones was published as a Working Group Note. This involved a complete rewrite and significant extension of the previous version. The Working Group also refreshed the Working Group Note Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages and submitted to the Unicode Technical committee in preparation for substantive review.
The Japanese Layout Task Force continued work on an extension to Requirements for Japanese Text Layout (日本語組版処理の要件) , in English and Japanese. This second version is now being prepared for review prior to final publication. The document continues to draw a great deal of interest from groups within and outside the W3C, and has led recently to a proposed draft for a new Unicode Technical Report related to properties for vertical text layout.
Besides regular maintenance work on other published articles, the Working Group also published set of 4 new or significantly updated articles that help content authors and developers understand how to work with language in HTML and CSS. In particular, the new text incorporates changes made in the way language declarations are handled in HTML5. Work was done on various other articles, and the group published Personal names around the world, which proved to be very popular with designers and developers.
The Internationalization Checker was rewritten and released. Available on the validator.w3.org domain, the checker allows people to check for both information and errors/warnings/advice related to internationalization features of their HTML markup. The new version supports more formats and incorporates more tests, and shares code and design with other W3C checkers, making it more robust, extendable and localizable. The checker was also integrated into Unicorn. This tool should prove very useful in helping people to discover internationalization concepts while creating HTML.
Since the beginning of April, 107 new translations of internationalization articles were added to the W3C site, in 7 languages. Many more translations were updated as articles were changed.
After the very successful initial workshop in Madrid, the European Commission funded MultilingualWeb project, delivered another two workshops, one in Pisa, Italy, hosted by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, andthe other Limerick, Ireland, hosted by the Language Research Centre. These workshops continue to prove popular with attendees. Plans are now under way for the fourth and final workshop, to be held in Luxembourg in 2012. The project brings together 22 European partners over two years to explore standards and best practices that support the creation, localization and use of multilingual web-based information. Through a series of workshops and various communication channels, the project spreads information about what standards and best practices currently exist, and what gaps need to be filled, and seeks to develop a multi-disciplinary network. The project is coordinated by W3C/ERCIM.
A sponsorship program was set up for the Pisa and Limerick workshops, and the workshops were officially endorsed by the European Commission's FLaReNet project. Posters about the project in Belgium and Malta, talks by partners and the use of social media were successful in raising the profile of the workshops, and the Pisa and Limerick workshops attracted over twice the originally planned audience numbers. The mid-term project review concluded that "the project has fully achieved its objectives and goals for the period and has even exceeded expectations", and specifically credited the involvement of the W3C in establishing the credibility of the project and the establishment, in a very short time, of what amounted to a strong brand. It is expected that this brand will be carried forward by a spin-off project looking at metadata standards for the multilingual web which is due to start in January 2012.
A report is available for the Pisa workshop, and a report for the Limerick workshop is currently in progress. Slides, IRC logs and video recordings are already available for both workshops.
The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Interest Group continued to provide help to developers for implementing ITS in their tools. The group continued its work in creating ITS rules for popular formats and reviewing emerging technologies for ITS adoption. It looked at the relation to other formats used in localization, such as XLIFF, and several implementations of XLIFF extraction/merge processes driven by ITS have been implemented, including one using XSLT.
Over the past six months, the Internationalization Activity was involved in presentations at the following venues: the WWW2011 Conference in Hyderabad, India, and the MultilingualWeb workshop in Pisa, Italy.
The Core Working Group will continue to provide reviews, advice and educational materials as needed. In particular, it will continue to work with the HTML5 specification to integrate the proposed bidirectional text features and to refine other internationalization features, and continue to support work on internationalization extensions to CSS, such as vertical text and ruby. It will also continue to move documents currently in draft form to completion, and to develop additional guidelines for specification developers.
The next workshop in the MultilingualWeb series will be held in Luxembourg City, in March 2012.
The Japanese Layout Taskforce will publish an extension to Requirements for Japanese Text Layout, and the group will continue to redevelop articles and tutorials to reflect changes in HTML and CSS.
There are plans to add XHTML5 and Polyglot checks to the Internationalization Checker and localize the user interface.
Talks are planned for the Internationalization & Unicode Conference in Santa Clara in October, and the ASLIB Translating & the Computer conference in London in November.
Negotiations are in progress for a new European Commission funded project to look at standards and reference implementations for metadata on the multilingual Web. If successful, we hope to propose a new Working Group under the Internationalization Activity to manage this work. This work will attract new members from the localization and language technology industries.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internationalization Core Working Group (participants) | Addison Phillips | Richard Ishida | Chartered until 31 December 2011 |
| Internationalization (I18n) Interest Group | Martin Dürst | Richard Ishida | Chartered until 31 December 2011 |
| Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Interest Group | Yves Savourel | Chartered until 31 December 2011 |
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