Locale Scope Proposal

I18N-ACTION-870

Problem: While much of the work of the Internationalization WG has focused on character sets, encodings, natural language text processing, presentation, and Unicode support, there is another dimension to internationalization. Support for linguistic, regional, and cultural variation in software, which is commonly associated with locale-aware APIs, has received less attention (since this is less common as a problem for document formats that are the basis of much of W3C's work). As the Web matures, the link between Web technologies, scripting languages such as ECMAScript, and host environments needs better definition in order to ensure interoperability.

Writing a complete definition of "internationalization" is better suited to standards bodies working directly on I18N. Some of examples of these include Unicode, IETF, ECMA, and ISO. However, there is overlap and guidance needed in the W3C Specification space. This document proposes a scope of work for the WG to consider.

Scope: The I18N WG should define best practices for specifications/specification authors; identify extant or emerging gaps; and document via articles, tests, and other materials how content authors can leverage these capabilities. Initial work should include:

- Complete and publish the LTLI doc, which does two things: (i) provides basic definitions of common jargon ("I18N", "L10N", etc.) and (ii) describes how BCP47, CLDR, ES-402, HTML/CSS, and other specifications handle language tags ("LT") and locale identifiers (that's the "LI" part)

- Update and provide Best Practices sections in specdev

- Encourage development of tests for locale-affected features in Web technologies, particularly Forms

- Encourage development of better support for page author control over the localized in-page experience. For example, using the "lang" attribute of an element to set the Intl.Locale in a script or the format of a form control (rather than the locale of the operating environment or the localization of the browser).