Appendix I: Internationalization Support

Contents

• I.1 Introduction
• I.2 Internationalization and SVG
• I.3 SVG Internationalization Guidelines

This appendix is informative, not normative.

I.1 Introduction

This appendix provides a brief summary of SVG's support for internationalization. The appendix is hyperlinked to the sections of the specification which elaborate on particular topics.

I.2 Internationalization and SVG

SVG is an application of XML [XML10] and thus supports Unicode [UNICODE], which provides universal 16-bit encoding for the scripts of the world's principal languages.

Additionally, SVG provides a mechanism for precise control of the glyphs used to draw text strings, which is described in Alternate glyphs. This facility provides:

• access to glyphs which are not defined in standard Unicode [UNICODE]
• the ability to follow the guidelines for normalizing character data for the purposes of enhanced interoperability (see [CHARMOD]), while still having precise control over the glyphs that are drawn.

SVG supports:

• Horizontal, left-to-right text found in Roman scripts (see the 'writing-mode' property)
• Vertical and vertical-ideographic text (see the 'writing-mode' property)
• Arabic bi-directional text (see the 'direction' and 'unicode-bidi' properties)

SVG fonts support alternate glyphs for Arabic and Han text.

Multi-language SVG documents are possible by utilizing the system-language attribute to have different text strings appear based on the user's language setting.

I.3 SVG Internationalization Guidelines

SVG generators should follow W3C guidelines for normalizing character data [CHARMOD] and should use the facilities for Alternate glyphs to override the standard glyphs used to represent normalized character data with specified glyphs.