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 and articles. I18n produces specifications such as the Character Model for the World Wide Web, Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios, and Ruby Annotation Markup. 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 Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group published an updated Working Draft of Best Practices for XML Internationalization and, after further work, published it as a Working Group Note. This publication marks the completion of the mission of the ITS Working Group. The Working Group also did outreach activities for the ITS 1.0 Recommendation (reviewing W3C and non-W3C drafts and presenting at the Internationalization & Unicode conference), and prepared the draft charter for the Internationalization Tag Set Interest Group.
The Japanese Layout Taskforce held a face-to-face meeting at TPAC 2007, published some initial, publicly-visible material, and continued the work of developing and translating the material (see the document status page). The main work of the task force is conducted in Japanese, and liaisons with other Working Groups are in English.
The Core Working Group provided the usual variety of formal and informal advice to W3C Working Groups and external parties, and addressed several new issues with HTML5.The group initiated new reviews for the XMLHttpRequest Object, the Selectors API and CSS Namespaces, and also continued discussions with Working Groups whose specifications had been reviewed prior to the last AC meeting. Discussions included such things as character encoding detection, use of <i> and <b> markup in HTML, case sensitivity in CSS, the use of ruby text for phonetic transcription in SSML, support of bidirectional text in SMIL, key events in the Web API group, XML Schema datatypes, bidirectional text in WCAG, etc. The group also facilitated work on incorporation of HRRIs in the IRI specification and the proposal to decouple XML 1.0 from Unicode 2.0. As we near release of Unicode 5.1, members of the group reviewed Unicode Standard Annex #29: Unicode Text Segmentation and the Unicode Transliteration Guidelines and sent comments.
The Internationalization Architecture Working Group charter terminated at the end of January, and the group was closed. The following documents were transferred to the Internationalization Core Working Group for continued work and eventual publication as Working Group Notes: Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization, Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Resource Identifiers, and Language Tags and Locale Identifiers for the World Wide Web.
In the area of guidelines, education and outreach, the Core Working Group continued to produce and update a number of articles. An updated set of Internationalization Quick Tips cards was printed. The techniques index was substantially revised and developed, and now also incorporates the ITS and Character Model best practices: this will help people who work with various aspects of web technology to find resources on the site relevant to a particular task. Working group members presented on internationalization topics at the 31st Internationalization & Unicode Conference.
The Core Working Group will continue to provide reviews, advice and resource materials as needed. Among the issues that are expected to arise, we see further review of the HTML5 specification, an update to the IETF's BCP 47 (language tags) that will involve updating materials and education, and further discussion on the role of Unicode control characters in bidirectional text. The Working Group will also begin work on one or more of the documents passed on from the I18n Architecture Working Group (see above).
The Japanese Layout Taskforce will publish a first draft of Requirements of Japanese Text Layout, in an English and a Japanese version, and present at SVG Open 2008.
The ITS Working Group has completed its mission but will continue to gather errata for the ITS 1.0 Recommendation until it closes in June. The newly established Internationalization Tag Set Interest Group will promote the adoption of the ITS Recommendation within and outside of W3C, and gather information in preparation for its further development.
Team members will present to content authors and developers at the @media conferences in San Francisco, USA, and London, UK, the Open Road conference in Melbourne, Australia, and a tutorial on ITS is planned for the WWW2008 conference in Beijing, China.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internationalization Core Working Group (participants) | Addison Phillips | Richard Ishida | Chartered until 31 January 2009 |
| Internationalization (I18n) Interest Group | Martin Dürst | Richard Ishida | Chartered until 31 January 2009 |
| Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group (participants) | Yves Savourel | Felix Sasaki | Chartered until 30 June 2008 |
| Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Interest Group | Yves Savourel | Felix Sasaki | Chartered until 31 December 2009 |
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