4.6.20 The ruby element
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/the-ruby-element.html#the-ruby-element

(endorsed by the i18n WG)

This is about the examples entitled "Mono-ruby for individual base characters", "Mono-ruby for compound words (jukugo)", "Jukugo-ruby", "Group ruby for describing meanings" and "Group ruby for Jukuji readings".

I think people will normally write the example

<ruby>君<rt>くん</ruby><ruby>子<rt>し</ruby>は<ruby>和<rt>わ</ruby>して<ruby>同<rt>どう</ruby>ぜず。

as

<ruby>君<rt>くん</rt>子<rt>し</ruby>は<ruby>和<rt>わ</ruby>して<ruby>同<rt>どう</ruby>ぜず。

I suspect it will be seen as an academic distinction to separate mono ruby for individual base characters from that for jukugo ruby.

I suggest that we have just one section "Mono-ruby" and choose an example that has both individual and jukugo ruby in it (such as the example above) and note the difference.

I suggest that we then add a note at the end that describes how the rendering of jukugo-related ruby could be changed using CSS to achieve the overlapping effects described in JLReq as 'jukugo-ruby'. A graphic could illustrate the difference. The example in the "Jukugo-ruby" section is a good one for this.

Note, by the way, that there are frequent references to the ruby annotations as hiragana or katakana. Actually they could be anything, including kanji. In particular, they are not likely to be kana in Chinese. There should be some qualification that the examples are about typical Japanese usage, or preferably an example in Chinese with pinyin annotations. Also, base characters are not always ideographic in Japanese.

I think it would make it simpler for readers to not separate group ruby for phonetics vs meaning. The difference is irrelevant for markup. The thing that is significant is the distinction between mono vs group ruby. I would propose a single subsection for group ruby that shows examples of both phonetic and meaning related annotation.

Richard Ishida can provide help to create the examples, if needed.