Arabic Layout Requirements 3rd Weekly Meeting

Action item review

<Shervin> http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#ActionSummary

ACTION: Behnam to research the existing experts for other languages like Urdu. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#action04]

<Shervin> ...Behnam put together list of experts to be contacted later.

ACTION: Mostafa to reach out to experts in Iran. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#action02]

<Shervin> ...Mostafa's working on more recruits.

ACTION: r12a to check regarding processing of the minutes and get back to the group. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#action07]

<Shervin> ...Richard on publishing the minutes. Access to CVS is needed which is not available right now. In the meantime, Richard will help us with those.

ACTION: Richard to send an email to folks at German Univ. in Oman. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#action03]

<Shervin> ...Richard sent email to Oman's German University, cc-ing Tom Milo.

ACTION: Shervin and Behnam to have the agenda for next meetings. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#action06]

<Shervin> ...Shervin and Behnam set up the meeting and agenda.

ACTION: Shervin to put together a preliminary list of existing literature. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/09/29-alreq-minutes.html#action05]

<Shervin> ...Shervin was to put together a list of existing literature. Currently working on it.

<Shervin> Behnam: Asks what's the best way to share files. Richard probably on git repo.

<Shervin> Behnam: Asks about action item protocol. Richard: They probably remain until we close them.

shervin: sent email to org in Qatar
... to see if they would be interested

Introductions

shervin: Waseem is from Syria (working at Netflix) should help us with recruiting from Lebanon, etc
... Qatar Computing Research Institute, contact was Majd Abbar

Mostafa: We have Sallar this week. He'll introduce himself shortly. Other people are on the list to be contacted. Will update the group.

Sallar: Worked in the web industry for 15 years. Currently with an advertising company in Finland. Interested in topics of Arabic script.
... Struggling with issues of Arabic-speak over the years in CSS, etc.
... Javascript and node.js experience.

Najib: I'll try to recruit a calligraphist from Tunesia.
... Attend and participate for comments.

Comments from the participants regarding topic keywords.

Mostafa: Filed a Github issue.

<r12a> https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/2

Mostafa: Link to Github issue: https://github.com/w3c/alreq/issues/2

Shervin: Let's see if people have comments, first.

Shervin: After that we can let Mostafa introduce the Github issue.

r12a: Any ideas about prioritization?
... Justification and elongation seems to be a priority.

Behnam: Last week we talked about glossary to have a precedence.
... Justification might depend on previous chapters.
... We might not have a solid starting point to start that.

r12a: Dig out the questions regarding CSS struggling with Arabic script.
... e.g. letter spacing.
... How Arabic does letter spacing? Elongation? Instances where the Arabic is streched to fit the width of Latin.
... There are works being done on vertical text. Specification is needed.
... Chinese, Mongolian with Arabic embedding. Direction might be different; i.e. read up the line, or down the line.
... questions regarding first letter styling; drop-caps.
... There is a document called @@@ where you can define counter styles.
... these are topics that come to mind.

<r12a> http://w3c.github.io/predefined-counter-styles/

<r12a> http://w3c.github.io/predefined-counter-styles/#arabic-styles

r12a: Counter styles document http://w3c.github.io/predefined-counter-styles/

Behnam: We can certainly take this and comment on that.
... Can be done separately as an external source.

Shervin: prefers to have the groundwork of these topics in alreq.

r12a: Our document is not much of a tech document. We don't comment on correctness of something like CSS.
... We just refer to it.
... And another document can dive deep in terms of technology.
... We can point to alreq and say that this is the way something can be done, it would be ideal.
... There are changes needed to be done regarding counter-style document.

<Behnam> ACTION: Behnam to files issues on w3c/predefined-counter-styles regarding naming and content [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action01]

r12a: The counter styles document can be changed any time.

r12a: Changes can be proposed in a Github issue.

Behnam: Other comments regarding the document.

Shervin: Propose Mostafa to introduce the pull request.

Mostafa: Glyph overlap issues in Arabic.

r12a: The nature of the problem of overlap?

Sallar: The opacity of letters on small joined area becomes darker than other places.
... specifically in letter spacing of minus.

Behnam: The behaviour with letter spacing differs and we can recommend in alreq.

Mostafa: Second item of pull request; separated but still joining arabic letters.

Sallar: Also appear in search.

r12a: CSS working group talked about this. Browsers differ. We should talk in the document and define the expected behaviour.
... will try to dig out some pointers.

Behnam: Moving to next issue in the pull request.

Mostafa: Mixed script font size.
... Font size is not the only property that an application might need; e.g. baseline and line-height.

Sallar: Line-height is important as well as base-line since letters don't fit in a squre.

Najib: Font size is one of the problems. Mixing with Latin script. Have to play with font size in each language to have them match. This is an issue.

r12a: Mostafa to break this into four separate issues.

<scribe> ACTION: Mostafa to break this into four separate issues. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action02]

Shervin: No current document available on that. Would be great to cover that.

Najib: Did some test with CSS Property `font-adjust` and it doesn't work properly in browsers.

<Behnam> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-size-adjust

Sallar: Had a similar problems. Had to edit the font for multiple cases.

Behnam: CSS font fallback not expected to be used for mixed script.
... recommendations of HTML/CSS standards is to mark parts of the text.
... Tech details of CSS is out of scope of our work. Focusing on what is required.
... We do not have the tools to generate a situation, we better start generating images.

r12a: Agrees with Behnam. W3C i18n activity writes articles. Anyone interested can engage.

Mostafa: The last item on the pull request; specific section in the document to talk about numbering.
... Can refer to it from other places of the document

Addition of layout of Quranic text to special cases (together with poetry and math).

Behnam: We have math and poetry as special cases.
... proposes to add Quran to special cases; because traditionally, there are few specific rules.
... Also when we get to character level there are special cases.
... e.g. Harkat glyphs above and below the baseline.
... Unicode covers most of them. This document can benefit from this coverage.
... This special cases introduces varies features of Arabic script other than daily usage of the text.
... e.g. in Quran manuscripts; a verse (a'yeh) can not span over pages.

<Sallar> an example of poetry layout: https://fa.wikisource.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%86%D9%88%DB%8C_%D9%85%D8%B9%D9%86%D9%88%DB%8C/%D9%85%DA%A9%D8%B1_%DA%A9%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%86_%D9%85%D8%B1%DB%8C%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86_%DA%A9%DB%8C_%D8%AE%D9%84%D9%88%D8%AA_%D8%B1%D8%A7_%D8%A8%D8%B4%DA%A9%D9%86

r12a: Tom Milo did some proof of concepts for this.
... Is wondering if how the special case of Quran is related to the web.

Mostafa: Put it as a Github issue. Treating Quran as a special case; has lots of typographic requirements.

<Behnam> ACTION: Behnam to file github issues for special cases, like Quran [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action03]

Mostafa: Some of these reqs might not be specific to Quran.
... See the requirements that Quranic case requires and see if it's limited to Quran.

Najib: Knows contacts in Morrocan ministry of religious affairs and can contact.

Behnam: Remind everyone that it would be great to collect information regarding the tools used for the purpose.

<Behnam> ACTION: Gather information about Arabic-specific Typesetting software [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action04]

r12a: Poetry and math in addition of Quranic text?

<r12a> http://www.w3.org/TR/arabic-math/

Behnam: These are special cases. Many issues to consider.

r12a: Introduces a document on math http://www.w3.org/TR/arabic-math/

Behnam: When we get to math there are other sources as Arabic LaTeX distro.

Shervin: This is a good example of how can we refer to a document and not get into the details.

Behnam: Agrees that we can refer to the document. It's a complicated matter.
... To keep it separate from MathML would be good as well.

Planning for start of work on glossary

<Behnam> ACTION: Behnam to file an issue re Math and whether to exclude that in the first version [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action05]

shervin: 2 possible approaches:
... (1) look at sources and create a base glossary, eg copy from jlreq and other docs
... just need to add translations and definitions
... ie. seed glossary
... (2) create the glossary as we create text
... so you create the glossary as you need new terms
... my preference is (1)
... what do people think?

<Najib> a mixe of 1 and 2

<r12a> behnam: i think we implicitly agreed on approach (1) last week

Behnam: Implicitly decided to talk the first approach.

Najib: I prefer (1), but (2) is implied by (1).

r12a: Planning to do a bit of both.
... Not let it hold up.

Behnam: I hear that we don't want to be block by glossary.

r12a: We can do approach (1) straight-away, but work on the content at the same time.

Behnam: Agrees.

<Behnam> +1

Shervin: Certainly can do it in parallel.

<Behnam> Behnam: +1 to Shervin

<r12a> +1

<mostafa> +1

<Najib> +1

Shervin: Volunteers to put a seed glossary together.

Sallar: Can help with the glossary.

Najib: Can help with glossary.

r12a: Good to ask on the list if Azzedine can help as well.

<Behnam> ACTION: Shervin to lead developing the Glossary and ask for volunteers on the list [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action06]

<Behnam> ACTION: Richard to figure out how to maintain action items [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action07]

<scribe> ACTION: Shervin, work with Najib and Sallar and Waseem regarding the glossary. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2015/10/06-alreq-minutes.html#action08]

<Najib> OK

Behnam: Final comments?
... Thanks the participants. Will send an agenda.