Meeting minutes
<janina> Date 21 Jul 2026
Administrivia
*Nobody away for the next few weeks.*
Symbols
*Russell shows demo with text decorated with Mulberry symbols, with <ruby> and a Mulberry font keyed on Bliss code points. Including zero-width joiners as well as single code points.*
Russell: Authoring experience is a little complicated; need to use OS method for input.
Russell: Have created a font with ~500 symbols.
Russell: *shows page with the rendered font representation, and English gloss side-by-side*
Russell: *Shows HTML source view*
Russell: *Changes the font used via CSS (a one-line change) and shows the glossary page now rendered with Bliss symbols instead.*
Russell: I wasn't concerned about implications of having lots of characters (Chinese has thousands of characters) but was concerned about whether having potentially thousands of zero-width joiners, as they're stored in a table within the font. Initial research indicates this won't be a problem.
Russell: This is ready to go. It was all about finding that tool - the nano emoji tool - I knew it ought to exist, but wasn't sure if I'd find an open source one - it's a great thing!
matatk: This is awesome; well done. See the styling issues re <ruby> we can sort this with an extension. I have ideas for how the extension can simulate the UA providing this feature, so we can demo it.
matatk: Concerns around the authoring experience not _quite_ being able to edit via plain text (technically is, but slightly awkward). However, this solution (from the perspective of simplifying my existing code, to the experience of rendering these things) seems to fit at the right level in the ecosystem we have.
Russell: It's actually very neat because, by going via Bliss, we can support all the other symbol sets.
Russell: I'm not able to size the <ruby>s independently here, just due to the example. There is a bit of an inconsistency between the Bliss and the Mulberry font size. The Mulberry symbols are quite consistent with each other. The Bliss ones seem a bit small.
Russell: I had to play round with the <ruby> positioning.
Russell: It doesn't seem to naturally pick the right spots. We need someone with some CSS expertise to work on that.
matatk: We need to be careful with guidance about how to make the fonts - is there something that we should suggest to people generating the fonts, how things can be tuned so that they come out with similar proportions, and the UA (which will have only one style sheet) will render different symbol sets well?
Russell: I noticed Hannes has put an option into his system relating to this. In Bliss, where the symbols are located within the 'viewbox' (in SVG terms) indicates something in relation to the meaning. Need to look into it. The Bliss symbols are consistent between themselves, but we have to define a standard about how the SVGs are prepared so
they're all consistent.
matatk: Could we make some sort of 'template' font that indicates allowed aspect ratios or sizes of things?
Russell: SVG is a language and you can generate the same image in several ways (strokes vs a pointillist approach, for example). Nano emoji doesn't like certain approaches. Sizing needs to be absolutes rather than percentages, for example. Understanding that well and providing the spec on what's required is important.
DDs
Abhinav's PR - now merged! w3c/
matatk: Great work! We can do further edits to DRY between Explainer and (intended) Note.
Abhinav: Happy to take care of linking between docs, where content is removed from one.
matatk: (noted in the PR, but...) The TAG intends to talk about the gap between well-known URIs and more organic service discovery at its upcoming face-to-face meeting - here are some pointers to what we'll be discussing: w3ctag/
TPAC 2026
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