This tutorial was updated to incorporate changes made to the article What you need to know about the bidi algorithm and inline markup, but various additional changes were made, including a new approach to handling examples. For a detailed list of changes read the full post.

Translators should consider retranslating the whole tutorial.

The title was changed from ‘Creating (X)HTML Pages in Arabic & Hebrew’ to ‘Creating HTML Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and Other Right-to-left Scripts’.

This article was revised to provide more clarity. More examples were added, and a new approach was taken, using images for examples and providing links to live code.

The term ‘directional context’ was replaced with ‘base direction’, the meaning and impact of that was expressed better. It also shows a little more clearly the types of problem the bidi algorithm needs help with, and how the proposed solutions related to each other.

This article was revised substantially.

Translators should consider retranslating the whole article.

This article was revised to provide more clarity. More examples were added, and a new approach was taken, using images for examples and providing links to live code.

The term ‘directional context’ was replaced with ‘base direction’, the meaning and impact of that was expressed better. It also shows a little more clearly the types of problem the bidi algorithm needs help with, and how the proposed solutions related to each other.

Thanks to Ivan Baldwin the FAQ-based article “Changing (X)HTML page encoding to UTF-8” has now been translated into Bulgarian.

Променяне на (X)HTML кодировката на страницата с UTF-8

Comments are being sought on this article prior to final release. Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We expect to publish a final version in one to two weeks.

Richard Ishida gave a presentation entitled New Work on Japanese Layout Requirements on 11 June, 2009 at the Fachhochschule Potsdam, Germany. The slides are annotated and in PDF. They build on a previous talk by Richard Ishida, Steve Zilles and Tatsuo Kobayashi at the Unicode Conference, and describe some of the key characteristics of Japanese Layout described in the newly published W3C Note, Requirements for Japanese Text Layout.

Richard Ishida gave a presentation entitled Practical Tips for Designing International Web Pages on 9 June, 2009, at Localization World, Berlin, Germany.

The slides are annotated and in PDF. The presentation looked at a selection of practical issues for people who develop web pages for a multilingual audience. Topics included the dangers of composing sentences in content using scripting, strategies for designing layout so that text expansion during translation will not destroy your efforts, strategies for navigating localized content, and the separation of content and presentation. It explored some of the potential difficulties that can be encountered in these areas and recommended some best practices to help you avoid them.

Thanks to Trusted Translations Inc. the FAQ-based article “Bidi Space Loss” has now been translated into Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese.

Pérdida de espacio bidi

Bidi-spatieverlies

Perda de espaço bidi

Thanks to Trusted Translations Inc. the tutorial “Creating SVG Tiny Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and other Right-to-Left Scripts” has now been translated into Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese.

Creación de páginas SVG Tiny en árabe, hebreo y otros sistemas de escritura de derecha a izquierda

SVG Tiny pagina’s creëren in het Arabisch, Hebreeuws en andere ‘van rechts naar links’ schriften

Criação de SVG Tiny Pages em árabe, hebraico, e em outros scripts da direita para a esquerda

Thanks to Ivan Baldwin the FAQ-based article “Two-letter or three-letter language codes” has now been translated into Bulgarian.

This document describes requirements for Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. For non-Japanese speakers it provides access for the first time to a wealth of detailed and authoritative information about Japanese typesetting. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051 and its authors include key contributors to that standard. However, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051.

The document was created by the Japanese Layout Task Force (with participation from four W3C Working Groups, CSS, Internationalization Core, SVG and XSL)

A Japanese version is also available.