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News about both new and updated resource pages (articles, FAQs, tutorials, publications, and tests) on the W3C Internationalization site. It repeats the document-related information from the Announcements list and all of the Changes list. It does not include announcements about events, nor items for review only.
Items are in chronological order, with the newest at the top. See the sidebar for other specialized lists and related RSS feeds.
The W3C Internationalization Activity home page was converted to a blog format in April of this year. The blog supersedes these news filter pages, although similar categories will be used to group blog posts. The old pages will remain available as a historical record. The new blog approach also makes it possible to easily host short articles with a comment facility, such as requests for public feedback.
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The article looks at design and development practices that can cause major problems for translation. Designers must be very careful about how they split up and reuse text on-screen because the linguistic differences between languages can lead to real headaches for localizers and may in some cases make a reasonable translation impossible to achieve. [search key: composite-messages]
The article looks at a particular design and development practise that can cause major problems for translation of content. Many programmers and designers decide that if a particular string is used in many places, they will use copies of the same string rather than implement many identical strings. String reuse is not necessarily a bad thing. The trick is to know what constitutes a good candidate for reuse and what does not. If you get it wrong, you can be creating an insuperable obstacle to good localization. [search key: text-reuse]
The W3C GEO Working Group has developed a set of Quick Tips to help newcomers to Web internationalization. They summarize important concepts related to international Web design in a similar way to the popular WAI Quick Tips. These tips are not complete guidelines, they are simply a few key concepts to bear in mind. The page also links to supporting material, where available, at the W3C's Internationalization Activity subsite.
The document is linked from the new Getting Started page that also explains various ways to find information on the W3C Internationalization subsite, and points to some key definitions. [search key: quicktips]
The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS). Organized by data categories, this set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. [search key: itsrec]
The W3C GEO Working Group has published the first in a series of articles aimed at those who are new to internationalization. These pages will introduce you to key internationalization topics and tasks, and direct you towards articles or resources on the W3C Internationalization subsite that will take you to the next level of understanding.
This document introduces topics in the general area of character sets, encoding, escapes, etc.
The document is linked from a new 'Getting Started' page that also explains various ways to find information on the W3C Internationalization subsite, and points to some key definitions.[search key: gettingstarted/characters]
What do the terms 'internationalization' and 'localization' mean, and how are they related?[search key: qa-i18n]
When should I use xml:lang and when should I define my own element or attribute for passing language values in an XML document schema (DTD)? [search key: qa-when-xmllang]
This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS). ITS is used with new and existing schemas to support the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations of ITS are provided for three schema languages: XML DTDs, XML Schema and RELAX NG. In addition, implementations are provided as fixed modularizations of various existing vocabularies (e.g. XHTML, DocBook, Open Document). The definition of the data categories is still in an early draft stage. [search key: itsrec]
When creating schemas (XML Schema, DTD, etc.), it is important to include constructs that meet the needs of content authors dealing with international audiences, and address the needs of the localization community. This document provides a list of key requirements to achieve such a goal. It will be used to provide a framework and direction for a detailed solution proposal (or set of proposals) to be developed later. [search key: itsreq]
The Internationalization Core Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization to improve text manipulation on the Web. Based on the character model Fundamentals W3C Recommendation, the draft provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for text normalization and string identity matching. [search key: charmod-norm]
Based on discussions with the XQuery and XSL Working Groups, the Internationalization Core Working Group has released Working with Time Zones as a Working Group Note. The document discusses problems encountered when working with the date, time, and dateTime values from XML Schema when time zone offsets are included or omitted. It offers guidelines for working with field-based dates and times, for working with date and time values that require a time zone, and for comparing times. [search key: timezone]
This article answers the question: "How do I set character encoding in my web authoring applications?"
The subsection entitled "Microsoft Notepad & WordPad 2000/XP (Windows)" was split into two, and substantive improvements were made to the text in each. [search key: qa-setting-encoding-in-applications]
The Internationalization Core Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N). The draft enhances SOAP messaging for locale and international preference negotiation and defines a locale policy. Without using Accept-Language and user identity, implementations can handle the requester's locale, locale policy and language preference. [search key: ws-i18n]
How do I change the encoding of my (X)HTML pages to UTF-8? [search key: qa-changing-encoding]
The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements. Addressing the main challenges and issues of internationalizing and localizing XML documents, the draft outlines requirements for vocabulary, guidelines and mechanisms to meet the needs of content authors, developers and the localization community. [search key: itsreq]
What are character entities and NCRs, and when should I use them? [search key: qa-escapes]
This article answers the question: "What is the most appropriate way to associate CSS styles with text in a particular language in a multilingual XHTML/HTML document?"
Much of the text has been changed or rearranged. A new subsection was added to explain how :lang recognizes language information declared higher up the hierarchy, unlike the other selectors. Links were also added to newly improved tests and a new results page relating to the use of the selectors described here. [search key: qa-css-lang]
This page summarises results for a series of tests aimed at discovering which selectors work for styling CSS by language. [search key: css-lang]
The 3 tests were rationalised, and a section was added to each page that tests the applicability of stylesheet rules when language information is inherited from an element further up the hierarchy, rather than declared on the element in question. This is a key distinguishing feature between behaviour of :lang and [lang |= '...']. [search key: test-css-lang]
Information about declaration of language has been removed to a separate tutorial, Declaring Language in XHTML and HTML (Draft). This tutorial now focuses on uses of language information in documents.
The tutorial has also been adapted to the latest format for tutorials, and, thanks to Pasquale Popolizio, the Italian translation has been revised to support the changes. (This is the first translation of a tutorial in this format.) [search key: tutorial-lang]
What are the best practices for using pull-down menus based on the select element to direct visitors to localized content? [search key: qa-navigation-select]
Work has been done at the W3C to enable support for ruby text in XHTML 1.1. This is especially useful for Japanese and other East Asian content. It allows small annotations to be rendered above and below base text, such as is needed to support Japanese furigana. This tutorial covers:
The tutorial (originally developed for the WWW2005 Conference in Chiba, Japan) has just been republished in non-draft status, after incorporation of changes based on review comments. [search key: ruby]
Substantive changes:
Improved the code in the example in the section "'Standards' vs 'Quirks' modes".
This was applied to the English, Romanian and Swedish versions of the document. The new French version already has it. [search key: serving-xhtml]
Reorganized and amplified the following sections to improve clarity:
One paragraph was moved from the section 'Directional typing of characters'. [search key: inline-bidi-markup]
Specifying the language of content is useful for a wide number of applications, from linguistically sensitive searching to applying language-specific display properties. In some cases the potential applications for language information are still waiting for implementations to catch up, whereas in others, such as detection of language by voice browsers, it is a necessity today. Marking up language information is something that can and should be done today. Without it, it is not possible to take advantage of any of these applications.
This document is one of a series of documents providing HTML authors with techniques for developing internationalized HTML using XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01, supported by CSS1, CSS2 and some aspects of CSS3. It focuses specifically on advice about specifying the language of content. It is produced by the Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) Working Group of the W3C Internationalization Activity. [search key: html-tech-lang]
Language tags are used to indicate the language of text in HTML and XML documents, and are also used in HTTP headers, SMIL and SVG switch statements, CSS pseudo-elements, etc. This article describes how to choose values for language tags.
The article augments an existing article with information that previously existed in a tutorial. The article title was also changed from "Language tagging in HTML and XML". [search key: language-tags]
The World Wide Web Consortium today released Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals as a W3C Recommendation. The document allows Web applications to transmit and process the characters of the world's languages. Building on the Universal Character Set defined by Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646, it gives authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers a common reference for text manipulation. Read the press release. [search key: charmod]
Recent developments enable you to add non-ASCII characters to Web addresses. This article provides a high level introduction to how this works. It is aimed at content authors and general users who want to understand the basics without too many gory technical details.
This article was updated to point to the new RFCs, published on 25 Jan 2005, relating to URIs and IRIs. [search key: idn-and-iri]
W3C announces support for the publication of RFC 3987 Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) as an IETF Proposed Standard, together with STD 66, RFC 3986, Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax (Press release).
IRIs expand the set of characters in URIs from a subset of US-ASCII to the Universal Character Set (Unicode/ISO 10646). They allow content developers and users to identify resources such as Web pages in their own languages. The IRI specification was in part developed by the Internationalization Working Group. The IRI specification will also provide a definitive reference for many W3C specifications - such as XML, RDF, XHTML and SVG.
See also the article An Introduction to Multilingual Web Addresses.
Recent developments enable you to add non-ASCII characters to Web addresses. This article provides a high level introduction to how this works. It is aimed at content authors and general users who want to understand the basics without too many gory technical details. [search key: idn-and-iri]
Significant change to 'Version information' section. Instructions now say to put the following note near the top of the page, rather than at the bottom:
<p id="disclaimer">This document is a translation. In the case of any discrepancy or errors, the <a href="/International/XXX/YYY.en.html">latest English original</a> should be considered authoritative. <a href="#copyright">Original copyright</a> belongs to W3C, as shown below.</p>
The text has also changed.
Improved clarity in several places. Susbtantially changed section 'Changes to the text' to say that translators should send information, rather than add details to the document. Added to section 'Notification of new or updated translations' information about news and RSS feeds, and Ivan's list of translations.
Added 7 additional companies to the list of those who use UTF-8 on their home page. [search key: qa-who-uses-unicode]
A new Character Model document dealing with Resource Identifiers was published as a Candidate Recommendation today. The content of this document was previously part of the Character Model Fundamentals document.
It is an architectural specification providing authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for the use of resource identifiers building on the Universal Character Set, defined jointly by the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646.
Editors: Martin J. Dürst, François Yergeau, Richard Ishida, Misha Wolf, Tex Texin [search key: charmod-resid]
The Character Model Fundamentals document moved to Proposed Recommendation status today.
This is an architectural specification providing authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web, building on the Universal Character Set, defined jointly by the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646. Topics addressed include use of the terms 'character', 'encoding' and 'string', a reference processing model, choice and identification of character encodings, character escaping, and string indexing.
Editors: Martin J. Dürst, François Yergeau, Richard Ishida, Misha Wolf, Tex Texin [search key: charmod]
Developed to help achieve worldwide usability for Web services, these requirements address the way internationalization options are exposed in Web services definitions, descriptions, messages, and discovery mechanisms.
Editor: Addison Phillips [search key: ws-i18n-req]
This article has been temporarily withdrawn pending additional work. [search key: qa-i18n]
Most of the Internationalization tests at http://www.w3.org/International/tests/ have been improved in the light of lessons learned over recent months. Changes include the addition of explanatory information at the beginning of each test page that describes what is being tested and provides useful notes. Presentation has been standardized and improved. There have also been a small number of changes made to existing test pages, and a small number of new tests have been added. Finally, links to the results pages have been added to the test overview page.
How do you define localization, internationalization and globalization? How are these concepts related? [search key: qa-i18n]
The GEO Task Force of the Internationalization WG has published this new Working Draft to solicit comments prior to publication as a WG Note. Please read and send any comments to www-i18n-comments@w3.org.
The document provides HTML authors with techniques for developing internationalized HTML using XHTML 1.0, HTML 4.01, or XHTML 1.1, supported by CSS1, CSS2 and some aspects of CSS3. This document focuses specifically on advice about specifying the language of content. [search key: html-tech-lang]
This test seeks to establish whether and how a user agent supports the use of the link element to allow the user to navigate to versions of the current document written in alternative languages.
See also the preliminary results and conclusions. [search key: sec-link]
Why should I use the language attribute in web pages? [search key: qa-lang-why]
Should I declare the language of my XHTML document using a language attribute, the Content-Language HTTP header, or a meta element? [search key: qa-http-and-lang]
How do I use .htaccess directives on an Apache server to serve files with a specific encoding? [search key: qa-htaccess-charset]
These two tests examine the recognition of escapes in XHTML. [search key: sec-escapes]
This test seeks to establish whether a user agent supports use of the hreflang attribute plus CSS to display information about the language of a link target. It does not test whether the hreflang value is used when viewing the target document.
See also the preliminary results and conclusions. [search key: sec-hreflang-style]
The Web Services Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios with additional guidance for implementers of Web service technologies. The document examines how language, culture and related issues interact with Web services architecture and technology. Comments are welcome on this draft. [search key: ws-i18n-scenarios]
The GEO Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has published three First Working Drafts under the general title of Authoring Techniques for HTML/XHTML Internationalization. They are Characters and Encodings 1.0, Specifying the language of content 1.0 and Handling Bidirectional Text 1.0. These new documents have been separated out from what was previously a single document and updated. They provide HTML authors with techniques for developing internationalized HTML using XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, or HTML 4.01, supported by CSS1, CSS2 and some aspects of CSS3.
The Internationalization Working Group has published a new Internet Draft of Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs). A two-week last call on the public-iri@w3.org mailing list was announced, which ends May 23, 2004. IRIs are similar to URIs, but with the restriction to US-ASCII removed, and with a mapping to URIs.
Covers:
Covers:
When is it appropriate, or not, to use language negotiation? (available in English and French) [search key: qa-when-lang-neg]
Do I need to worry because display capabilities (screen sizes, number of colors, etc.) of computers vary in other countries? [search key: qa-display-capabilities]
How do I use the MultiViews approach on an Apache Web server to automatically serve resources in the language requested by an HTTP request? [search key: qa-apache-lang-neg]
See the list of previous news.
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