FEISGILLT 2013 will showcase the upcoming Internationalization Tag Set 2.0 standard, together with closely related, core localization standards like XLIFF. FEISGILTT 2013 is the preconference event of Localization World, London 2013

. W3C members will get 20% discount for FEISGILTT. FEISGILTT participants are entitled to a 10% discount when registering for the main conference. However, registering for the main conference is NOT required to register for FEISGILTT.

Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm basics is a repackaging of the initial part of “What you need to know about the bidi algorithm and inline markup” as a standalone article. It provides a gentle introduction to the behaviour of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, and helps you understand why bidirectional text in Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, Urdu, etc. behaves the way it does.

The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group published a First Public Working Draft of Metadata for the Multilingual Web – Usage Scenarios and Implementations. This document introduces a variety of usage scenarios and applications for the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0

, ranging from simple machine translation or human translation quality check to training for machine translation systems or automatic text analyis. Many of the underlying implemementations will be showcased in the upcoming W3C MultilingualWeb Workshop12-13 March in Rome.

A new FAQ page devoted to the topic of private-use characters, noncharacters, and sentinels has been posted on the Unicode web site. This FAQ aims to clear up confusion about whether noncharacters are permitted in Unicode text, and how they differ from ordinary private-use characters. The recently published Corrigendum #9: Clarification About Noncharactersmakes it clear that noncharacters are permitted even in interchange, and the new FAQ page addresses some of the fine points about their usage and about differences from other types of Unicode code points. The brief mentions of noncharacters in other FAQ pages have also been updated accordingly.

Are you unclear about what Unicode “noncharacters” even are? The new FAQ page also answers basic questions about noncharacters and private-use characters, and provides a bit of history about how they came to be part of the Unicode Standard.

Another release of the weekly Openweb Platform Summary from February 11 to 18, 2013. This is a short one. You can read again last weekversion. Your comments are helpful.

CSS Custom Filters and CSS Shaders in SVG WG

CSS has a draftspecification on how to apply effects to an element before rendering it. It allows for custom filters effects which is basically an extension point. The SVG Working Group sent an email asking if it would be possible to reserve webglas a keyword for CSS Shaders (see also the SVG WG minutes ). Tab Atkins recommendedto use the following syntax:

@support (filter-type(webgl)) {
 @filter curl { ... }
}

James Robinson noted that supporting WebGL and CSS shaders were different and suggested to use another keyword, which is ok with the SVG Working Group.

Mouse Events Soon To Be UI Events?

Anne van Kesteren (Mozilla) is proposing to move all MouseEvent into the UI Events specification.

Proposal to add getClientRect method to CaretPosition

Scott Johnson (Mozilla) is proposing to add a new method, getClientRect(), to the CaretPositioninterface(Editor's draft) for tracking changes to caret positions across reflows. During editing for example in a text area, the document layout might be changed which will require to place the caret at a new position. This new method would help.

CSS Fonts and case matching

A new draft has been published for CSS Font with a nice addition. No need to worry anymore if the fonts have been written with the appropriate uppercase letter or not. It is now case insensitive . If you write everything lowercase, it should still be working. See the other changes.

Privacy, a document in need of love

The W3C tag doesn't have the resources to tackle the note on Patterns for Privacy by Design in Javascript APIs . So if you are interesting by activelymaintaining that document, it is time for you to join the Privacy Interest Group(open to the public).

CSS Parser, from state machine to recursive-descent

Tab Atkins has rewritten the algorithm for parsing CSS from a state machine one to a recursive-descentone.

The deadline for speaker submissions for the 6th MultilingualWeb Workshop (March 12–13, 2013 in Rome, Italy)is this Friday (January 18 at 23:59 UTC).

With a keynote by Mark Davis and Vladimir Weinstein (Google), special breakout sessions on linked open data and other critical topics, this Workshop is set to continue the tradition of excellence set by the previous six Workshops, and will provide an outstanding forum for thought leaders to share their ideas and gain critical feedback.

While the organizers have already received many excellent submissions, there is still time to make a proposal, and we encourage interested parties to do so by the deadline. With over 100 attendee registrations already submitted for the Workshop, we are certain to have a large and diverse audience and stimulating discussion about all of the presentations.

For more information, please visit the Rome Workshop Call for Participation.

Mark Davis (President and Cofounder, Unicode Consortium, and Software Engineer, Unicode and ICU, Google) and Vladimir Weinstein (Engineering Manager, Google) will deliver the keynote talk at the upcoming 6th MultilingualWeb Workshopin Rome, Italy (March 12–13).

The keynote will discuss how Google supports its ambitious goals of removing barriers to information, in an ever increasing number of languages, through recent innovations in internationalization technology.

The MultilingualWeb workshop series examines best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. It aims to raise the visibility of existing best practices and standards and identify gaps, with a view to helping content creators, localizers, tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web.

Participation is free. We welcome participation from both speakers and non-speaking attendees. For more information and to register, see the Call for Participation.

Led by experts in the field, two special break-out sessions on Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Linked Open Data (LOD) are planned for the upcoming MultilingualWeb workshop, to be held at the headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in the heart of Rome, on 12-13 March. We will also continue the Open Space discussions that have been so popular in the past.

In addition, lunch-time exhibition sessions will showcase the recent work and progress made on implementing the ITS 2.0 specification, a major effort in the W3C to improve support for language- and translation-related processes.

Register soon to ensure you get a place, especially if you are interested in also speaking. See the Call for Participation.

The W3C’s MultilingualWeb workshops bring together approximately 150 implementers, leading developers, localizers, researchers and users of the Web to discuss best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. One and a half days of presentations will be followed by break-out sessions that will allow attendees to explore additional topics in an in-depth, discussion-oriented fashion.

Participation is free.

If you have any questions, contact the program committee chair, Dr. Arle Lommel (arle.lommel@dfki.de).

This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0.

ITS 2.0 is designed to foster the creation and localization of multilingual Web content, focusing on HTML5, XML based formats in general, and to leverage localization workflows based on the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF), and language technology applications like machine translation or named entity annotation. In addition to HTML5 and XML, algorithms to convert ITS attributes to NIF is provided.

Last Call means that the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Groupfeels that ITS 2.0 is ready to move to recommendation. If you have comments on the document, please send them to the list mentioned in the document status before 10 January.