Internationalization (i18n)

Making the World Wide Web worldwide!


Groups/repos

i18n WG

i18n Interest Group

African LE

Americas LE

Arabic LE

Chinese LE

Ethiopic LE

European LE

Hebrew LE

India LE

Japanese LE

Korean LE

Mongolian LE

SE Asian LE

Tibetan LE

Participate!

Join a Group

Follow the work

Translate a specification or page

International­ization Sponsorship Program

News by category
afrlreq (22)
alreq (31)
amlreq (7)
Announcements (91)
Articles (73)
clreq (28)
CSS (5)
elreq (15)
eurlreq (8)
Feedback request (4)
For review (76)
Gap report (5)
Highlight (317)
hlreq (27)
ilreq (22)
jlreq (28)
klreq (25)
Miscellaneous (59)
mlreq (22)
MLW (40)
New draft (64)
New resource (133)
New translation (21)
notify-multilingweb (63)
notify-webi18n (56)
sealreq (14)
Spec review (2)
Talks (39)
Test (30)
tlreq (16)
Translation needed (219)
Tutorials (5)
Uncategorized (3)
Unicode (11)
Upcoming (21)
Update (111)
w3cSemanticWeb (134)
w3cWebArchitecture (107)
w3cWebDesign (386)
w3cWebOfDevices (106)
w3cWebServices (114)
w3cWebUserAgents (183)
w3cXMLCore (130)
x (0)
News archives
December 2024 (2)
November 2024 (2)
July 2024 (4)
June 2024 (1)
May 2024 (2)
April 2024 (1)
December 2023 (1)
November 2023 (1)
October 2023 (2)
September 2023 (3)
August 2023 (2)
July 2023 (2)
June 2023 (4)
April 2023 (5)
March 2023 (1)
February 2023 (3)
January 2023 (1)
November 2022 (1)
October 2022 (1)
August 2022 (3)
July 2022 (2)
June 2022 (4)
May 2022 (3)
March 2022 (2)
August 2021 (2)
July 2021 (1)
June 2021 (3)
May 2021 (4)
March 2021 (3)
February 2021 (2)
October 2020 (1)
September 2020 (1)
August 2020 (1)
July 2020 (1)
June 2020 (3)
February 2020 (1)
August 2019 (1)
July 2019 (3)
April 2019 (1)
March 2019 (1)
February 2019 (1)
January 2019 (1)
August 2018 (2)
July 2018 (2)
June 2018 (1)
May 2018 (1)
April 2018 (1)
February 2018 (1)
December 2017 (2)
August 2017 (3)
June 2017 (1)
April 2017 (2)
March 2017 (5)
February 2017 (2)
December 2016 (1)
November 2016 (1)
September 2016 (3)
July 2016 (1)
June 2016 (2)
May 2016 (4)
March 2016 (4)
February 2016 (5)
January 2016 (1)
November 2015 (2)
October 2015 (4)
September 2015 (1)
July 2015 (8)
June 2015 (5)
May 2015 (2)
April 2015 (4)
March 2015 (4)
February 2015 (6)
January 2015 (3)
December 2014 (5)
November 2014 (1)
September 2014 (1)
August 2014 (5)
July 2014 (2)
June 2014 (4)
May 2014 (4)
April 2014 (4)
March 2014 (6)
February 2014 (6)
January 2014 (7)
December 2013 (2)
October 2013 (4)
September 2013 (4)
August 2013 (3)
July 2013 (2)
June 2013 (3)
May 2013 (4)
April 2013 (8)
March 2013 (4)
February 2013 (3)
January 2013 (4)
December 2012 (4)
November 2012 (1)
October 2012 (1)
September 2012 (4)
August 2012 (5)
July 2012 (5)
June 2012 (3)
May 2012 (5)
April 2012 (2)
March 2012 (4)
February 2012 (11)
January 2012 (4)
December 2011 (4)
November 2011 (6)
October 2011 (3)
September 2011 (4)
August 2011 (6)
July 2011 (13)
June 2011 (4)
May 2011 (6)
April 2011 (3)
March 2011 (10)
February 2011 (7)
January 2011 (5)
December 2010 (3)
November 2010 (7)
October 2010 (3)
September 2010 (17)
August 2010 (6)
July 2010 (6)
June 2010 (2)
May 2010 (1)
April 2010 (9)
March 2010 (3)
February 2010 (6)
January 2010 (5)
December 2009 (5)
November 2009 (3)
October 2009 (5)
September 2009 (6)
August 2009 (8)
July 2009 (10)
June 2009 (10)
May 2009 (3)
April 2009 (1)
March 2009 (5)
January 2009 (4)
December 2008 (2)
November 2008 (3)
September 2008 (3)
August 2008 (6)
July 2008 (4)
June 2008 (13)
May 2008 (2)
April 2008 (7)
March 2008 (6)
February 2008 (2)
January 2008 (2)
December 2007 (2)
November 2007 (2)
October 2007 (2)
September 2007 (4)
August 2007 (2)
July 2007 (9)
June 2007 (9)
May 2007 (2)
April 2007 (5)
March 2007 (9)
February 2007 (8)
December 2006 (6)
November 2006 (7)
October 2006 (7)
September 2006 (21)
August 2006 (5)
July 2006 (8)
June 2006 (4)
May 2006 (8)
April 2006 (6)
March 2006 (2)
February 2006 (5)
January 2006 (3)
December 2005 (1)
November 2005 (3)
October 2005 (1)
August 2005 (4)
July 2005 (2)
May 2005 (1)
March 2005 (1)
February 2005 (2)
January 2005 (1)
November 2004 (1)
October 2004 (1)
September 2004 (2)
July 2004 (3)
May 2004 (1)
April 2004 (4)
March 2004 (7)
February 2004 (2)
January 2004 (1)
November 2003 (2)
October 2003 (4)
September 2003 (3)
August 2003 (5)
July 2003 (4)
June 2003 (5)
May 2003 (4)
August 2002 (1)
September 1999 (1)
August 1999 (1)
Search news

I18n sponsors

APL, Japan The Paciello Group Monotype Alibaba

Article published: Can we derive base direction from language?

Sometimes people wonder whether it’s possible to obtain a definitive list of language tags which indicate a RTL base direction, so that there would be no need for separate direction metadata. This article looks into whether that is really feasible. (Spoiler: The W3C Internationalization Working Group believes it is not.)

Read the article.

To comment on this article, raise a GitHub issue.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Before you comment here, note that your IP address is sent to Akismet, the plugin we use to mitigate spam comments.

Copyright © 2023 World Wide Web Consortium.
W3C® liability, trademark and permissive license rules apply.
Questions or comments? ishida@w3.org