W3C I18N news: resources

Time to change your RSS feed

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:00:01 GMT

Closing this RSS Feed The W3C Internationalization Activity home page was converted to a blog format in April of this year. The blog supersedes these news filter pages, although similar categories will be used to group blog posts. The old pages will remain available as a historical record. The new blog approach also makes it possible to easily host short articles with a comment facility, such as requests for public feedback. If you are subscribed to this RSS feed, you should now subscribe to this new feed.

Working with Composite Messages

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:45:03 GMT

New article The article looks at design and development practices that can cause major problems for translation. Designers must be very careful about how they split up and reuse text on-screen because the linguistic differences between languages can lead to real headaches for localizers and may in some cases make a reasonable translation impossible to achieve. [search key: composite-messages]

Re-using Strings in Scripted Content

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:45:02 GMT

New article The article looks at a particular design and development practise that can cause major problems for translation of content. Many programmers and designers decide that if a particular string is used in many places, they will use copies of the same string rather than implement many identical strings. String reuse is not necessarily a bad thing. The trick is to know what constitutes a good candidate for reuse and what does not. If you get it wrong, you can be creating an insuperable obstacle to good localization. [search key: text-reuse]

Internationalization Quick Tips for the Web

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 12:45:02 GMT

New Getting Started material The W3C GEO Working Group has developed a set of Quick Tips to help newcomers to Web internationalization. They summarize important concepts related to international Web design in a similar way to the popular WAI Quick Tips. These tips are not complete guidelines, they are simply a few key concepts to bear in mind. The page also links to supporting material, where available, at the W3C's Internationalization Activity subsite. The document is linked from the new Getting Started page that also explains various ways to find information on the W3C Internationalization subsite, and points to some key definitions. [search key: quicktips]

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS)

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:00:02 GMT

New Working Draft The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS). Organized by data categories, this set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. [search key: itsrec]

Introducing Character Sets and Encodings

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:45:02 GMT

New Getting Started material The W3C GEO Working Group has published the first in a series of articles aimed at those who are new to internationalization. These pages will introduce you to key internationalization topics and tasks, and direct you towards articles or resources on the W3C Internationalization subsite that will take you to the next level of understanding. This document introduces topics in the general area of character sets, encoding, escapes, etc. The document is linked from a new 'Getting Started' page that also explains various ways to find information on the W3C Internationalization subsite, and points to some key definitions.[search key: gettingstarted/characters]

Localization vs. Internationalization

Wed, 05 Dec 2005 20:10:02 GMT

New FAQ-based article What do the terms 'internationalization' and 'localization' mean, and how are they related?[search key: qa-i18n]

FAQ: xml:lang in XML document schemas

Wed, 24 Nov 2005 11:50:02 GMT

New FAQ-based article When should I use xml:lang and when should I define my own element or attribute for passing language values in an XML document schema (DTD)? [search key: qa-when-xmllang]

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS)

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:00:02 GMT

New First Public Working Draft This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS). ITS is used with new and existing schemas to support the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations of ITS are provided for three schema languages: XML DTDs, XML Schema and RELAX NG. In addition, implementations are provided as fixed modularizations of various existing vocabularies (e.g. XHTML, DocBook, Open Document). The definition of the data categories is still in an early draft stage. [search key: itsrec]

Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:00:01 GMT

Updated Working Draft When creating schemas (XML Schema, DTD, etc.), it is important to include constructs that meet the needs of content authors dealing with international audiences, and address the needs of the localization community. This document provides a list of key requirements to achieve such a goal. It will be used to provide a framework and direction for a detailed solution proposal (or set of proposals) to be developed later. [search key: itsreq]

Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 18:00:01 GMT

Updated W3C Working Draft The Internationalization Core Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization to improve text manipulation on the Web. Based on the character model Fundamentals W3C Recommendation, the draft provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for text normalization and string identity matching. [search key: charmod-norm]

Working with Time Zones

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 18:00:01 GMT

New W3C Working Group Note Based on discussions with the XQuery and XSL Working Groups, the Internationalization Core Working Group has released Working with Time Zones as a Working Group Note. The document discusses problems encountered when working with the date, time, and dateTime values from XML Schema when time zone offsets are included or omitted. It offers guidelines for working with field-based dates and times, for working with date and time values that require a time zone, and for comparing times. [search key: timezone]

Setting encoding in web authoring applications

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 13:33:00 GMT

Updated FAQ article This article answers the question: "How do I set character encoding in my web authoring applications?" The subsection entitled "Microsoft Notepad & WordPad 2000/XP (Windows)" was split into two, and substantive improvements were made to the text in each. [search key: qa-setting-encoding-in-applications]

Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N)

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:00:01 GMT

New First Working Draft The Internationalization Core Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N). The draft enhances SOAP messaging for locale and international preference negotiation and defines a locale policy. Without using Accept-Language and user identity, implementations can handle the requester's locale, locale policy and language preference. [search key: ws-i18n]

Changing (X)HTML page encoding to UTF-8

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:00:00 GMT

New FAQ-based article How do I change the encoding of my (X)HTML pages to UTF-8? [search key: qa-changing-encoding]

Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements

Sat, 06 Aug 2005 00:00:01 GMT

New First Working Draft The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements. Addressing the main challenges and issues of internationalizing and localizing XML documents, the draft outlines requirements for vocabulary, guidelines and mechanisms to meet the needs of content authors, developers and the localization community. [search key: itsreq]

Using character entities and NCRs

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 17:55:00 GMT

New FAQ-based article What are character entities and NCRs, and when should I use them? [search key: qa-escapes]

Styling using the lang attribute

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 18:42:00 GMT

Updated FAQ article This article answers the question: "What is the most appropriate way to associate CSS styles with text in a particular language in a multilingual XHTML/HTML document?" Much of the text has been changed or rearranged. A new subsection was added to explain how :lang recognizes language information declared higher up the hierarchy, unlike the other selectors. Links were also added to newly improved tests and a new results page relating to the use of the selectors described here. [search key: qa-css-lang]

Test results: Language-dependent styling

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:00:00 GMT

New test results page This page summarises results for a series of tests aimed at discovering which selectors work for styling CSS by language. [search key: css-lang]

Language dependent styling tests

Tues, 02 Aug 2005 08:15:00 GMT

Updated tests The 3 tests were rationalised, and a section was added to each page that tests the applicability of stylesheet rules when language information is inherited from an element further up the hierarchy, rather than declared on the element in question. This is a key distinguishing feature between behaviour of :lang and [lang |= '...']. [search key: test-css-lang]

Using language information in XHTML, HTML and CSS

Tues, 02 Aug 2005 08:45:00 GMT

Updated tutorial Information about declaration of language has been removed to a separate tutorial, Declaring Language in XHTML and HTML (Draft). This tutorial now focuses on uses of language information in documents. The tutorial has also been adapted to the latest format for tutorials, and, thanks to Pasquale Popolizio, the Italian translation has been revised to support the changes. (This is the first translation of a tutorial in this format.) [search key: tutorial-lang]