W3C

– DRAFT –
Internationalization Working Group Teleconference

29 January 2026

Attendees

Present
addison, atsushi-bot-no-user, Bert, JcK, jsahleen, MURATA, r12a, xfq
Regrets
-
Chair
Joel Sahleen
Scribe
xfq

Meeting minutes

Agenda Review

Action Items

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

<jsahleen> #205

<gb> Action 205 Fix markup, style and font for Mojibake definition (on xfq)

<addison> close #205

<gb> Closed issue #205

<addison> reopen #205

<gb> Reopened issue #205 Fix markup, style and font for Mojibake definition

<jsahleen> #204

<gb> Action 204 respond to SHACL PR and issues with comments about bidi (on aphillips) due 2026-01-29

<jsahleen> #202

<gb> Issue 202 Martin Duerst response on URL standard gaps (by jsahleen)

xfq: done #205

<jsahleen> #197

<gb> Action 197 rename the repo and shortname and publish ruby accessibility document as a first draft note (on xfq, himorin) due 2025-11-18

xfq: done #197

Info Share

Review RADAR Review

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

<jsahleen> w3c/i18n-request#288

<gb> Issue 288 SHACL 1.2 SPARQL 2025-12-01 > 2025-01-22 (by nicholascar) [REVIEW REQUESTED] [LC]

<jsahleen> w3c/i18n-request#283

<gb> Issue 283 SHACL 1.2 Core 2025-11-03 > 2025-01-15 (by nicholascar) [REVIEW REQUESTED] [SR] [LC]

<jsahleen> w3c/i18n-request#281

<gb> Issue 281 Web Sustainability Guidelines 2025-10-22 > 2026-01-09 (by mgifford) [REVIEW REQUESTED] [WD]

https://github.com/w3c/i18n-activity/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3Aig%3Asustainableweb

Pending Issue Review

<jsahleen> w3c/i18n-activity#2072

<gb> Issue 2072 Ambiguity of the term "character" and its impact on internationalization and testability (by w3cbot) [pending] [tracker] [s:wcag]

<jsahleen> w3c/i18n-activity#2071

<gb> Issue 2071 Ambiguity of the term "word" and its impact on internationalization and testability (by w3cbot) [pending] [tracker] [s:wcag]

MURATA: I'm the ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 34 chair elect
… I'm now also a member of the JTC 1 Japan Committee from this year I'll be attending the JTC 1 meetings
… these 2 issues are about text and wording subgroup of AG WG
… their primary resources are the English dictionaries
… not the Unicode standard
… 10646, or charmod
… in a very naive manner
… they should read Unicode and 10646

addison: I agree with you that this is a problem
… it's a common problem in our space

addison: xfq provided a link to our specdev document, which tries to do a more condensed job of saying charmod

MURATA: so far, the feedback I have received from AG WG is superficial
… they just want to borrow some definition

<jsahleen> Responses forwarded from WCAG: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-core/2026JanMar/0036.html

MURATA: there are no universal definition of 'word' applicable to every language in the world
… and I don't think that was good units for accessibility

Potential FO on WCAG definitions

MURATA: I've filed an FO, if the charter is not modified in a way satisfactory, I plan to file another FO
… I'm pessimistic about we can make good progress on fixing terminology

addison: they need to collect more than just English, or Western European languages
… because they tend to have very, very similar typographic requirements etc.
… they can't do it for every language on earth easily
… but they need some kind of mechanism

MURATA: they should pay more attention to text content
… i18n, or the lack of i18n, in WCAG 3, is even more serious

jsahleen: what is the proposed release date for WCAG 3?

xfq: It's probably not going to be released anytime soon; it might take several years before it's officially released

r12a: what specifically are you objecting to?

MURATA: I have 2 FOs in mind, one for the charter, one for the content of the WD
… of WCAG 3

jsahleen: so the FO you were planning on raising in the near term is against the charter?

MURATA: yes
… but if the WD incorporates the terms and definitions from the text and wording subgroup
… I'll file another FO in the near future

addison: maybe the question is whether the i18n WG would endorse the objection

MURATA: that's up to you

[Discuss charter timeline]

r12a: I think it would be useful for us to be able to follow the conversation
… it might be useful if we were in the loop somehow

jsahleen: we need to work on improving communications with them and see if we can get in the loop

MURATA: that's fine

r12a: how will we do it?

jsahleen: forward me the email

Canonicalization of tags in :lang() selector

w3c/csswg-drafts#4154

<gb> Issue 4154 Consider Canonicalization of language tags in :lang() selector maching (by frivoal) [selectors-4] [i18n-needs-resolution] [i18n-tracker] [Agenda+ F2F] [Needs Review of Proposed Text] [selectors-5] [Agenda+ i18n]

addison: we talked to them at the previous TPAC
… the idea is that if you have the lang tag in :lang() as a range that ought to be canonicalized
… so that they will match more effectively
… @@2
… there's some specific text in RFC 5646
… they could add the additional CLDR stuff if they wanted to

jsahleen: sounds like a very straightforward discussion

addison: should be straightforward

r12a: part of the issue that they were trying to canonicalize zh-HK
… there's nothing in BCP 47 registry that includes what that would canonicalize to

addison: it canonicalizes to itself
… Chinese is particularly complicated in this case
… just pure BCP 47 matching says the strings match or they don't match
… zh-HK is probably Cantonese
… so probably should match 'yue'
… but it doesn't
… because those are different tags
… and zh-HK doesn't match zh-Hant
… unless you're going to use the CLDR stuff
… which computes the script subtag

r12a: the reason that we're talking about that is because florian cited that as a thing that would be canonicalized in his list of three examples
… zh-HK, zh-yue, and yue

addison: if they follow BCP 47
… zh-yue would match yue
… because the primary would be removed
… but zh-HK would never match either of those things
… it's a quirk

jsahleen: there's a distinction between what CLDR does and what's specified in the RFC

addison: CLDR uses additional data to compute missing subtags

JcK: CLDR does not contradict BCP 47
… just adds on to it

addison: right

addison: grandfathered Chinese tags map to modern tags
… zh-yue is also a grandfathered tag
… they could incorporate additional canonicalization to address some of the problems they notice if they wanted to
… but we should discuss that

r12a: what about canonicalzing script tags?

addison: then you need the CLDR data

Definition of Mojibake

w3c/i18n-glossary#95

<gb> Pull Request 95 Update the definition of 'Mojibake' (by xfq)

https://pr-preview.s3.amazonaws.com/w3c/i18n-glossary/pull/95.html#dfn-mojibake

[xfq introduces the changes]

w3c/i18n-glossary#96

<gb> Issue 96 Add a definition for tofu (by xfq)

Definition of Mojibake

All: ok to merge, and work on the tofu definition

Publication of ruby-tts-req

<astearns> new link for CSSWG meeting: https://appleinc.webex.com/appleinc/j.php?MTID=m0285cd91a3df484dd3d7e83c61418a8f

addison: this is a first draft

r12a: we've always in the past reviewed it internally before we send it out for publication

w3c/ruby-tts-req#48

<gb> Issue 48 Publication (by fantasai)

https://www.w3.org/2025/11/11-i18n-minutes.html#7242

jsahleen: next time we publish something, internal review before it goes out the door

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 248 (Mon Oct 27 20:04:16 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/straight forward/straightforward

Maybe present: All

All speakers: addison, All, JcK, jsahleen, MURATA, r12a, xfq

Active on IRC: addison, astearns, atsushi-bot-no-user, jsahleen, MURATA, xfq