W3C

– DRAFT –
Adapt Weekly Telecon

08 July 2025

Attendees

Present
Abhinav, Annalu, janina, Lionel_Wolberger, matatk, Russell
Regrets
-
Chair
Lionel
Scribe
janina, Lionel_Wolberger, matatk

Meeting minutes

Announcements

Symbols

<matatk> Symbols issues: https://github.com/w3c/adapt/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3ASymbols

<Annalu> I still need to add use cases - hope to do this 3rd & 4th week of July while I am away.

<matatk> Tracking issue for Jeffrey's ruby proposal: w3c/a11y-review#234

<gb> Issue 234 Add a way to indicate the semantics of ruby annotations (by w3cbot) [tracker] [s:html-ruby-extensions]

matatk: No further action needed currently

janina: I am trying to understand this scenario. When a browser has not been updated to this new spec, the browser will render this ruby markup
… is that an acceptable outcome?

matatk: Browsers are evergreen today and expected to be uptodate
… for (rarer) embedded systems, or legacy systems, they are likely not being used to access new web pages that will feature this new use of Ruby

Lionel_Wolberger: +1 to Matt's response

janina: I am happy if implementers are happy, but would like this to be explicitly acknowledged.

<Zakim> janina, you wanted to understand how a new attirb solves the ruby problem

Lionel_Wolberger: I'd like to take your objection in the context of risk, and think the risk is low that this will impact users. There are older/embedded scenarios, but probably not going to be impacted.

Russell: If the symbols are being specified, and not added automatically, i.e. the web page is created with symbols in it...
… then it really would trash the web page. So wanted to openly state that. Maybe everyone else had that clear in their mind. An old page doesn't get symbols; you have to explicitly add symbols there.

janina: I'm imagining someone using an AI agent to do this, but they'd expect symbols.

Russell: So we are not trashing pages where the author didn't have an intention for symbols to be there.

janina: Are users upset to see rubies in mixed-language pages?

Russell: The intent of ruby is just within CJK, it's a pronunciation guide.

Russell: Is ruby used outside of Japanese?

Russell: I found not many examples, and they were all Japanese.

janina: I am satisfied with the answers here, but we should give transparency and share these risks and mitigations.

janina: I'm satisfied with what I'm hearing in this call, but think it's wise for us to explicitly clear this up with browsers and W3C management at TPAC.

Russell: I agree that we don't want to be putting symbols on pages where they're not expected.

<Annalu> bye

Well-known destinations

WKD issues that aren't proposed destinations: https://github.com/w3c/adapt/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3A%22Well-known%20destinations%22%20-label%3Aproposed-destination

Lionel_Wolberger: We closed 5 proposed destinations; we expect to further reduce the list in future

matatk: We will need to speak with COGA.
… they have an important concern about the differing needs of different people
… the type of help on the help page is significant to them

janina: I suspect web content cannot support such sharp, clean divisions
… more helpful may be, how do you exit from a wrong turn (many people do not know the 'back' command)
… WKD can help people return from such wrong turns

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

All speakers: janina, Lionel_Wolberger, matatk, Russell

Active on IRC: Abhinav, Annalu, janina, Lionel_Wolberger, matatk, Russell