Sometimes people wonder whether it’s possible to obtain a definitive list of language tags which indicate a RTL base direction, so that there would be no need for separate direction metadata. This article looks into whether that is really feasible. (Spoiler: The W3C Internationalization Working Group believes it is not.)

Read the article.

To comment on this article, raise a GitHub issue.

Information about text direction and language needs to be associated with strings used on the Web. This article explores use cases that support that need.

Read the article.

To send a comment, raise a GitHub issue.

The article Can we derive base direction from language? is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Thursday 1 April.

Sometimes people wonder whether it’s possible to obtain a definitive list of language tags which indicate a RTL base direction, so that there would be no need for separate direction metadata. This article looks into whether that is really feasible. (Spoiler: The W3C Internationalization Working Group believes it is not a feasible approach.)

Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on this link, or on “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)

CSS defines the typographic character unit as a basic unit of text for use with editing operations, however the meaning of that term can vary according to the operation, and there are issues in working with such units in complex scripts. In this article we look at examples of some of those differences and issues.

Read the article.

The article Use cases for bidi and language metadata on the Web is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Thursday 11 March.

The W3C Internationalisation Working Group recommends that data formats and string data are always associated with information about text direction and language. This is to ensure that the data can be correctly managed when displayed to a user. This article explores use cases that substantiate the need for this type of information.

Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on this link, or on “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)

The article Typographic character units in complex scripts is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Thurday 25 February.

CSS defines the typographic character unit as a basic unit of text for use with editing operations, however the meaning of a that term can vary according to the operation, and there are issues in working with such units in complex scripts. In this article we look at examples of some of those differences and issues.

Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on this link, or on “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)

The W3C Internationalization Activity has just published First Public Working Drafts for 6 more documents that explore gaps in language support on the World Wide Web.

• Adlam Gap Analysis
• Hebrew Gap Analysis
• German Gap Analysis
• French Gap Analysis
• N’Ko Gap Analysis
• Osage Gap Analysis

These drafts complement the 21 Gap-analysis documents published last June.

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

The Editor’s Draft of the Working Group Note “Character Model: String Matching” is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Wednesday, 21 October.

The Character Model series of documents contains background material, best practices, and recommendations for specification authors, implementers, and content authors related to the use of character encodings and Unicode on the Web. The “String Matching” document deals with specifying content restrictions and the matching of identifiers in protocols and document formats for W3C specifications.

The new revision adds two new terminology definitions (“application internal identifiers”, “user-facing identifiers”) and a new section targeted to specification authors on “Specifying Content Restrictions” (Section 3.1). The Working Group would like comments about these specific changes; comments about other aspects of the document are also welcome.

Please send any comments as github issues.

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

An editorial update of Requirements for Japanese Text Layout has been published. The key changes include the following:

• Fixes for various errata, and improved wording in a number of locations.
• Merge of English and Japanese versions into a single document, with switches that allow readers to view the text in either language, or both. A particular language can also be requested via the URL (for example, like this: English, Japanese).
• Assignment of link targets to each list item and note, making it possible to point into the document in a more fine-grained way.

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編集上の修正を行った日本語組版処理の要件を公開しました。主要な変更点は以下の通りです。

・いくつかの誤りを訂正し、多くの箇所の表現を改善しました。
・日本語・英語版を単一ページに統合し、読者が各言語単独または両方を含む形で表示できるようにしました。(英語もしくは日本語表示のように)各言語単独で表示するURLも利用可能です。
・文書中の各リスト項目とノートにリンクアンカーを追加し、より細かく文書の特定箇所へリンクできるようになりました。