W3C

– DRAFT –
Internationalization Working Group Teleconference

24 July 2025

Attendees

Present
Addison, Atsushi, Bert, Fuqiao, Richard
Regrets
JcK
Chair
Addison Phillips
Scribe
Bert

Meeting minutes

Agenda Review

Action Items

<addison> https://github.com/w3c/i18n-actions/issues

<addison> #176

<gb> Action 176 add WG comment to html 11395 (on aphillips) due 2025-07-03

<addison> #173

<gb> Action 173 ping zainab (on aphillips) due 2025-06-19

<addison> close #173

addison: Done, but no response

<gb> Closed issue #173

<addison> #171

<gb> Action 171 revise local-font-access to exclude localhost and talk more about opt-in model (on ZainabAq) due 2025-05-22

<addison> #169

<gb> Action 169 reply to html 10843 and css 9832 (on aphillips) due 2025-05-08

<addison> #162

<gb> Action 162 poll I18N/CSS for new day/time (on aphillips) due 2025-03-25

addison: No response

<addison> #157

<gb> Action 157 write glossary proposal identifying options and next steps for those options (on aphillips) due 2025-02-20

<addison> #135

<gb> Action 135 follow up on XR issue 1393 about locale in session (on aphillips) due 2024-10-17

<addison> #127

<gb> Action 127 make a list of shared topics of interest between TG2 and W3C-I18N (on aphillips) due 2024-09-30

<addison> #33

<gb> Action 33 Close issues marked `close?` or bring to WG for further review (on aphillips)

<addison> #7

<gb> Action 7 Remind shepherds to tend to their awaiting comment resolutions (Evergreen) (on aphillips, xfq, himorin, r12a, bert-github) due 18 Jul 2023

<addison> #4

addison: Somebody enquires for a spec that is on the radar now.

<gb> Action 4 Work with respec and bikeshed to provide the character markup template as easy-to-use markup (on aphillips) due 27 Jul 2023

Info Share

<addison> Bert: TPAC organizers are looking for videos

<addison> ... demos, tutorials, etc.

<addison> ... there is a page on the tpac site

<xfq> https://www.w3.org/2025/11/TPAC/group-updates.html

Bert: The page ^^ doesn't give much instructions

r12a: Maybe my video about bidi for Unicode

addison: Or my tutorial, don't know if I can use it.

Review RADAR Review

<addison> https://github.com/orgs/w3c/projects/91/views/1

addison: Incoming request for review of IMSC
… Timed Text WG

atsushi: There is only a small diff from prev versions

addison: Deadline16 Sep
… They talk about Japanese chaacter set, superscript subscript, etc.
… They are our previous issues, aren't they?

atsushi: Not me, as I'm staff contact.

xfq: I can review it.

addison: Under Awaiting, there is ACT. They closed all issues. Can we close them, too?

Pending Issue Review

<addison> https://github.com/w3c/i18n-activity/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Apending

Using AI for i18n minutes?

r12a: We had a discussion about AI and minutes in the W3C team. CAn we use AI to transcribe minutes? And can we summarize the minutes?
… No answer yet, but various groups are experimenting.
… We can transcribe with Zoom.
… We shouldn't just put out minutes without checking them.
… But human scribes need checking, too.
… For a small group like ours, people currently have to scribe often.
… If I can't scribe, I can still review.

addison: My experience is thjat transcription is decent, unless there is local jargon.
… But technology is moving fast.
… We can experiment, try it in parallel.

xfq: It may be problematic if you look at the transcript, there ar emany unnecessary words.
… Editing adterwards takes time.
… Reviewing the summary doesn't take as much time.

r12a: How do you turn it it on and who gets the transcript.

xfq: You can configure it before the meeting.

Bert: Only the host will get the saved transcript, if any.

addison: Fuqiao, you're the host....

People looking at the realtime transcript...

addison: So are we going to try?

xfq: Yes, I will configure and experiment.

r12a: Can you teach it pronunciation? E.g., ‘Fuqiao’?

ACTION: xfq: enable transcription of zoom call so we can experiment

<gb> Created action #177

Bert: Zoom does a new transcript after the meeting, different from the real-time transcript.

Intl.getTextInfo

<xfq> tc39/proposal-intl-locale-info?tab=readme-ov-file#text-information

xfq: I discivered this API ^^
… You can give it a BCP47 tag and it can give you text direction of that language
… But one language can have mutlipe directions.
… We may want to add a note to make this clearer.

addison: The Intl features mirrors an ICU feature.
… It is estimated information.
… If you give it ‘en’ it will retunr ltr, which is usually correct.
… But for hAzerbajani it will often be wrong.
… You shouldn't depend on it, as it is as best an estimate.

xfq: Do we need to do anything? Do we want them to add some guidance?

<xfq> https://tc39.es/proposal-intl-locale-info/#sec-locale-direction

addison: I'd need to look at the text of their spec.

<xfq> text ^

addison: This groups should maybe be reviewing Intl docs (as Plh earlier suggested)

addison: Should we ask them by email if they would like getting reviews?

xfq: If they do, hwo do we manage the reviews? Like we do for other gorups?

addison: Yes

xfq: We could do that.

Bert: Sounds interesting to review and useful, but how much would we have to review?

ACTION: addison: inquire with tc39 about reviews of specs

<gb> Created action #178

addison: I'll write them an email.
… Fuqiao, do you want ot respond to the issue? Or create an issue in their repo?

xfq: I will create an issue.

ACTION: xfq: add issue to getTextInfo expressing interest in a health warning or pointer to string-meta etc

<gb> Created action #179

<xfq> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-core/2025JulSep/0024.html

Address Formats PR

<addison> w3c/i18n-drafts#622

<gb> Pull Request 622 Initial work on address formats (by xfq)

<addison> https://github.com/w3c/i18n-drafts/blob/xfq/address-2024/questions/qa-address-formats.en.md

xfq: We have an article about person's names, and examples of address auto-complete. I thought we could write an articel about address formats aroind the world.
… I wrote this draft.
… If people think it is good enough I can put it in HTML and send it out for wide review.
… Richard has given comments, which I fixed.

addison: Great start
… Richard's article ahs been useful over the years. This is a good summary.
… I gave a talk at a Unicode conf some years ago, about shipping internationally, and about the last mile: not everybody has a clear address (‘the house witht he blue door after the pist office’)

addison: In Carmel CA, there are no street numbers. People name their houses.

r12a: I once came across an Indian address ‘across the cinema’

xfq: About last mile and shipping: I thought about how people sometines specify where to put the package: put it outside the door, etc.

addison: And names in Chinese but people don't know the transliteration.

addison: (My conference talk seems not to have been recorded.)

xfq: Shall I add these things to my article?

addison: It is in Q&A format?

xfq: Yes.

addison: We do wide review?

xfq: Yes, after I made it HTML.

addison: There is nothing wrong, I just imagibe there are more things you could add.

xfq: OK, I will revise it a bit and convert to HTML

<addison> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJEKbUx3B0w&list=PLMc927ywQmTPLAnkm8qIi2yWNMZrKQdt4&index=13&pp=iAQB0gcJCcwJAYcqIYzv

addison: My string meta talk ^^

AOB?

<xfq> w3c/i18n-drafts#565

<gb> Pull Request 565 Update the multilingual web addresses article (by xfq)

xfq: Pull Request ^^
… mostly editorial
… I raised a few issues about that article and planned to fix it in several steps.

addison: Seems mosyly typos.

xfq: Can I merge it?

addison: I wish you would.

<atsushi> +1

<Bert> +1

xfq: OK, I will merge it.

r12a: I noticed in minutes we put links, but they don't get into the transcript.
… SO my preferred solution is that the transcript appears in IRC, too.

xfq: We would need to develop an IRC bot.

Bert: I once worked on an IRC bot to translate on the fly. Training it took too long, but I think it s doable.

r12a: It will make it possible to pause the transcription bot as well.

Summary of action items

  1. xfq: enable transcription of zoom call so we can experiment
  2. addison: inquire with tc39 about reviews of specs
  3. xfq: add issue to getTextInfo expressing interest in a health warning or pointer to string-meta etc
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

Maybe present: r12a, xfq

All speakers: addison, atsushi, Bert, r12a, xfq

Active on IRC: addison, atsushi, Bert, r12a, xfq