W3C

– DRAFT –
I18N ⇔ CSS

19 December 2023

Attendees

Present
atsushi, r12a, xfq_
Regrets
fantasai
Chair
-
Scribe
xfq_

Meeting minutes

florian: I started looking into the TTML issue that you put on the agenda

florian: if you could walk me through a little bit that would help
… I haven't read the whole thing yet at the moment

[Debugging Zoom/Calendar problems]

Interaction between tts:writingMode and tts:direction on paragraph element.

w3c/ttml2#1211

<gb> Issue 1211 Interaction between tts:writingMode and tts:direction on paragraph element. (by palemieux) [i18n-tracker]

atsushi: there seems to be some compat issues between TTML and CSS
… there was some objection about conversion to the CSS model

florian: in one sense, TTML uses CSS, and in another it doesn't really, because it's all normatively treated as a hint, which you don't have to follow rigorously
… because if you read the normative text of the spec
… it says CSS is just a hint

florian: which means the model isn't defined
… you can sort of do anything you want and it's still compliant
… I don't know if the same thing is true for XSL
… I wonder if there is a way to detect that you're using CSS-specific syntax
… in that case you need to turn off the old model and switch to the CSS model
… I wasn't necessarily saying this is a separate feature flag
… why do we have an issue with it now?
… what is actually the problem we're trying to solve here?

atsushi: I also need to dig out all the discussions
… I discussed this with TTWG chairs but they need to find some time to look into this

xfq: maybe we can look into this before the next meeting

florian: I'm reasonably familiar with how CSS deals with this
… I'm not familiar with how XSL does and I'm somewhat confused

atsushi: differences between CSS2 and CSS3

florian: is there a difference here?
… CSS2 didn't have writing mode, but it did have direction

florian: we all have some reading to do

[css-text-4] move "balance | stable | pretty" out of text-wrap

w3c/csswg-drafts#9102

<gb> CLOSED Issue 9102 [css-text-4] move "balance | stable | pretty" out of text-wrap (by frivoal) [css-text-4] [Closed Accepted by CSSWG Resolution] [i18n-tracker] [Needs Testcase (WPT)]

florian: I think there's nothing to do with the spec
… except Google should implement the thing correctly
… maybe I could double check if we have enough tests in WPT

xfq: looks good to me

Action Items

https://github.com/w3c/i18n-actions/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Acss

<florian> w3c/i18n-discuss#11

<gb> Issue 11 Languages / writing systems with 2 line breaking conventions in common use? (by frivoal)

florian: Hangul has 2 different styles of line breaking
… either syllable based or space based
… it's fairly unique
… there's also Ethiopic script, which has both styles
… the style of keeping words together and breaking at spaces
… I think Korean is alone in the world
… and I would like to be sure
… ideally in your markup the language is tagged
… but if you're in a user generated content for a discussion, social media, people will type things and they won't be marked up for language
… because you don't know what they type
… there is no way in CSS currently to say whether you break at spaces or words
… I don't recall that we found another language that is like Korean

r12a: I think the Ethiopic style that you refer to is an older style, but it isn't a defunct style
… it's not completely gone
… you still have plenty of situations where you may encounter text like that
… or work with text like that

florian: is that because you're dealing with historical text and you want to present them in a historical way?
… or could there be currently generated content that wants to look like this?
… would you write this style to Facebook?
… comment on forums or newpaper comment or Wikipedia

Wikipedia seems to use spaces: https://am.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%8B%A8%E1%8A%A3%E1%88%9B%E1%88%AD%E1%8A%9B_%E1%8D%8A%E1%8B%B0%E1%88%8D

r12a: that's the question we should put to Daniel
… who has written the requirements
… my impression is that you could find it being written today, but it's not very common

florian: my impression was that it's tied to things like liturgic texts or religious things
… if your feeling is different, I will trust you over myself

r12a: I'm not 100% certain

ACTION: r12a to contact Daniel and check the Ethiopic word boundary situation

<gb> Created action #65

florian: if it turns out it's only Korean I reasonably confident that this can be a trivial addition to CSS

r12a: people might type archaic scripts into emails
… if they're researching that script and collaborating with other people

florian: @@1
… if both style is in common use then that's where it gets interesting in my view

[css-text] Extra spacing between ideographs and non-fullwidth punctuation/symbols

w3c/csswg-drafts#9479

<gb> Issue 9479 [css-text] Extra spacing between ideographs and non-fullwidth punctuation/symbols (by xfq) [css-text-4] [i18n-needs-resolution] [i18n-jlreq] [i18n-clreq]

xfq: there is a proposal in Unicode

florian: we can wait for the discussions in Unicode

Ruby

florian: still need some time before I can start work on it, maybe in January

<florian> https://rubizaidan.jp/

florian: this group of people who are not only about ruby on the web
… they're about ruby in general
… it's a foundation for ruby
… because they think ruby is important for society

florian: I'm still convinced it's the right thing to do
… we need ruby to be able to read properly when you're a language learner

[Discuss the ruby markup in https://rubizaidan.jp/ ]

florian: the ruby is inserted by JavaScript

r12a: when they're using display: block, they may not know there's a display: ruby-text value
… we have a ruby markup article since 2016
… about what we should do
… we have some educational materials
… maybe we should make them more visible
… I keep seeing people trying to make up new names for tabular markup
… which is annoying because we've been using that for quite a long time
… I'd like to suggest that if we're doing educational stuff we try to base it on this or develop this further
… rather than writing something completely different

AOB

florian: I think our next scheduled meeting is January 16th
… I'm hoping to have an update by then

Summary of action items

  1. r12a to contact Daniel and check the Ethiopic word boundary situation
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 221 (Fri Jul 21 14:01:30 2023 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/... in one sense, TTML uses CSS, and in another it doesn't really/florian: in one sense, TTML uses CSS, and in another it doesn't really

Succeeded: s/it doesn't really/it doesn't really, because it's all normatively treated as a hint, which you don't have to follow rigorously

Succeeded: s/, I think//

Succeeded: s/not about ruby on the web/not only about ruby on the web

Maybe present: florian, xfq

All speakers: atsushi, florian, r12a, xfq

Active on IRC: florian, r12a, xfq_