Yearly Archives: 2007

Since it is mentioned in the CSS 2.1 specification, Firefox, Opera and Safari (and maybe more) browsers allow you to number HTML lists using Armenian numerals.
The basic algorithm followed is described in the CSS3 Lists module.
You can see some tests and results.
Some questions have arisen about a couple of details relating to the approach specified in CSS3, and we would like to get clarity from people with appropriate knowledge of this subject. Please participate in the email discussion on www-international@w3.org if you can help.
Please provide advice on the representation of 7000 and of numbers above 9,999.
In a recent email Simon Montagu expresses the questions as follows:

[This wikipedia link], which quotes no sources, corresponds to the implementation in Firefox and Opera (upper-case characters and only Ւ for 7000).
[This link] is an article from National Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 8 (May, 1939). I don’t have access to download the full article, but the URI shows the first page, which includes a table showing lower-case characters and only ւ for 7000.
Furthermore, there are contradictions in http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-lists/ — the prose description of the algorithm says:
“This is a simple additive system defined for the range 1 to 99999999.
The digits are split into two groups of four (if there are less than eight digits, the least significant group is filled first). Within each group, appropriate digits are picked from the following list (at most one per column) and written in descending order by value (thousands first). Any characters in the most significant group are then combined with a circumflex accent, ◌̂ U+0302.”
This implies that the circumflex has the effect of multiplying by 10000, but the following example uses the circumflex to multiply by 1000:
“Example 1: Decimal 7482951 in lower-armenian is ու̂ն̂ձ̂սջծա U+0578 U+0582
U+0302 U+0576 U+0302 U+0571 U+0302 U+057D U+057B U+056E U+0561. ”
If the example is correct, the system will only be defined up to 9,999,999 and not 99,999,999. Digits from 1000 to 9000 would also have two possible representations: either ռ ս … or ա̂ բ̂ … and it isn’t clear whether one should be preferred or either may be used.

These tests check whether a user agent supports internationalised CSS-based numbering methods for lists. More extensive tests and results have been added for Armenian, Georgian, and lower-case Greek numbering, based on CSS3 algorithms but to support the CSS 2.1 Candidate Recommendation.

This article was largely rewritten to provide greater clarity, and further information about how to detect and remove a UTF-8 signature.

Changes include a new title and question, and the integration of the former background section into the answer.

This tutorial was updated to reflect the fact that IE7 no longer flips into quirks mode when an XML declaration is used. For a detailed list of changes read the full post.

The following paragraphs were changed as shown by the ins and del markup.

<p>In browsers such as <ins>Internet Explorer 7, Firefox,</ins><del>Mozilla</del>, Netscape, Opera, and others, with or without the XML declaration, a page served with a DOCTYPE declaration will be rendered in standards mode.</p>
<p> With Internet Explorer<ins> 6</ins>, however, if anything appears before the DOCTYPE declaration the page is rendered in quirks mode. </p>
<p>Because Internet Explorer <ins> 6</ins> users <ins>still</ins> count for a very large proportion of browser users, this is a significant issue. If you want to ensure that your pages are rendered in the same way on all standards-compliant browsers, you need to think carefully about how you deal with this.</p>
<p>The presence of an XML declaration in an XHTML 1.0 file served as HTML will cause your file to be rendered in quirks mode on Internet Explorer <ins> 6</ins> (and therefore for a potentially large proportion of your audience).</p>

This article was updated to reflect the fact that IE7 no longer flips into quirks mode when an XML declaration is used. For a detailed list of changes read the full post.

The following paragraphs were changed as shown by the ins and del markup.

<p>In browsers such as <ins>Internet Explorer 7, Firefox,</ins><del>Mozilla</del>, Netscape, Opera, and others, with or without the XML declaration, a page served with a DOCTYPE declaration will be rendered in standards mode.</p>
<p> With Internet Explorer<ins> 6</ins>, however, if anything appears before the DOCTYPE declaration the page is rendered in quirks mode. </p>
<p>Because Internet Explorer <ins> 6</ins> users <ins>still</ins> count for a very large proportion of browser users, this is a significant issue. If you want to ensure that your pages are rendered in the same way on all standards-compliant browsers, you need to think carefully about how you deal with this.</p>
<p>The presence of an XML declaration in an XHTML 1.0 file served as HTML will cause your file to be rendered in quirks mode on Internet Explorer <ins> 6</ins> (and therefore for a potentially large proportion of your audience).</p>
The following list item was added to the Further Reading section:
<li><p><a href=”http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Bb250496.aspx”>Cascading Style Sheet Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7</a> <span class=”uri”>http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Bb250496.aspx</span></p></li>

Translators should retranslate the article.

Thanks to A.Osobka and N.Fabisz the FAQ-based article “HTML, XHTML, XML and Control Codes” has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated).

Thanks to A.Osobka and N.Fabisz the FAQ-based article “Styling using the lang attribute” has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated).

Thanks to A.Osobka and N.Fabisz the article “Introducing Character Sets and Encodings” (part of the Getting Started series) has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated).

At the request of Mark Davis, added the text:

“See also ICU4J since it contains more up-to-date data (and more functionality) than the JDK routines.”

FAQ-based article: How can I ensure that when text expands in translation the background images will still work?

By Richard Ishida, W3C.