W3CW3C Internationalization (I18n) Activity: Making the World Wide Web truly world wide!

Improving text layout and typography on the Web and in eBooks

The W3C needs to make sure that the text layout and typographic needs of scripts and languages around the world are built in to technologies such as HTML, CSS, SVG, etc. so that Web pages and eBooks can look and behave as people expect around the world.

To that end we have experts in various parts of the world documenting layout and typographic requirements and gaps between what is needed and what is currently supported in browsers and ebook readers.

The mainstay of this work is a series of documents describing requirements for text layout and typography support on the Web and in digital publications. The documents cover Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, Tibetan, various Indic scripts, and hopefully soon Mongolian and other scripts. In addition, there are other documents looking at specific aspects what is needed to properly represent content for local speakers of the many languages around the world. See a list of relevant work in this area.

This page points browser implementers and specification developers to information about how to support specific aspects of content in scripts from around the world. It serves as an index into the material described just above, but much more besides. It points to relevant information in specifications, to tests, and to useful articles and papers. It is not exhaustive, and will be added to from time to time.

Look through the list and check whether your needs are being adequately covered. If not, write to [email protected] (you need to subscribe first) and make the case. If the spec does cover your needs, but the browsers don't support your needs, raise bugs against the browsers.

Characters & phrases

Identifying boundaries of graphemes, words and larger groupings

Does the browser correctly apply functions to the basic units of text, be they characters, character sequences, syllables, or words? Are you able to select appropriate units, for example by double-clicking in the text, whether or not 'words' are separated by spaces? Should triple-clicking select a paragraph, etc.?

Requirements:

Other links:

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Punctuation

What are the typical punctuation marks used, and how are they used? (See other sections for information about how quotations work, and how punctuation interacts with boundary detection and line-breaking.)

Requirements:

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Quotations

What is the expected behaviour for quotations marks, especially when nested? Should block quotes be indented or handled specially?

Requirements:

See also Punctuation.

Spec links:

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Transforming characters

What transformations does your language need? For example, are you able to convert letters to uppercase, capitalised and lowercase alternatives according to your typographic needs? Are browsers able to convert between half-width and full-width presentation forms?

Spec links:

Tests:

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Letter spacing

Many scripts create emphasis or other effects by spacing out the letters or syllables in a word. We know there are questions here about how this should work in Indic and SE Asian scripts, and in Arabic-based scripts. Can you provide information? Are there requirements for other scripts that we should add?

Requirements:

Spec links:

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Bidirectional text direction

Is bidirectional text support adequate for scripts like Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana, etc.

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests:

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Baselines & inline alignment

Does the specification accurately and comprehensively cover requirements for baseline alignment between mixed scripts and in general?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Other links:

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Ruby annotation

The ruby spec currently specifies an initial subset of requirements for fine-tuning the typography of phonetic and semantic annotations of East Asian text, including furigana, pinyin and zhuyin fuhao systems. Is is adequate for what it sets out to do? What other controls will be needed in the future?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests:

Other links

Questions pending

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Line decoration

Some aspects related to the drawing of lines alongside or through text involve local typographic considerations. For example, underlines need to be broken in special ways for some scripts, and the height of strike-through may vary depending on the script. What about vertical text? Does this section cover your needs?

Spec links:

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Emphasis

Bold and italic are not always appropriate for expressing emphasis, and some scripts have their own unique ways of doing it, that are not in the Western tradition at all. Can you find what you need for your script in this section?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Other links:

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Fonts

This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. Are there things missing for your script?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests:

Other links:

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Blocks & paragraphs

Line breaking

Does CSS capture the rules about the way text in your script wraps when it hits the end of a line? Note that there are some specific rules about Chinese and Japanese, but we know that more information is needed for Korean, and for other scripts.

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests:

Other links:

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Hyphenation

Is hyphenation or its alternatives correctly described when it comes to your script or language?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests:

Other links:

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Justification & line-end alignment

Do the start and end values work (particularly useful for right-to-left scripts)? When text in a paragraph needs to have flush lines down both sides, does it follow the rules for your script? Does the script conform to a grid pattern? Can you provide information?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests

Other links

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White space and wrapping in source code

Do the rules for transforming white space in the source text for display meet the requirements of your script? This is particularly relevant for Far Eastern and South East Asian scripts, that don't use spaces between words.

Spec links:

Tests:

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Counters, lists, etc

The CSS specification describes a limited set of simple and complex styles for counters to be used in list numbering, chapter heading numbering, etc. Are the details correct? We have another document that provides over 120 templates for user-defined counter styles in over 30 scripts. Are there more? Are there other aspects related to counters and lists that need to be addressed?

Spec links:

Tests:

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Other paragraph features

Are the rules for indenting text at the start of a paragraph sufficient to support your language or script? Does your script allow punctuation to hang outside the text box at the start or end of a line? If so, does this section cover your needs?

Requirements:

Spec links:

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Layout & pages

Initial letter styling

Does the browser or ereader correctly handle special styling of the initial letter of a line or paragraph, such as for drop caps?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Tests:


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Direction-agnostic layout

When content can flow vertically and to the left or right, how do you specify the location of objects, text, etc. relative to the flow? For example, keywords 'left' and 'right' are likely to need to be reversed for pages written in English and page written in Arabic.

Spec links:


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Vertical text

How well does the spec cover the requirements for vertically oriented text? What about if you mix vertical text with scripts that are normally only horizontal – does that work as described?

Requirements:

Spec links:

Other links:

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Mixed horizontal and vertical text

The spec describes rules for embedding horizontal runs of text in vertical lines, as is often seen with numbers in Chinese, Japanese and Korean vertically-set text. Is this adequately covered?

Requirements:

Spec links:

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Notes, footnotes, etc

Does the browser or ereader provide support for notes, footnotes, endnotes or other necessary annotations of this kind in the way needed for your culture?

Requirements:

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Page numbering, running headers, etc

Are there special conventions for page numbering, or the way that running headers and the like are handled in your culture?

Requirements:

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More page layout and pagination

Some cultures define page areas and page progression direction very differently from those in the West. Is this an issue for you? Are widows and orphans relevant? In what order do pages progress, RTL or LTR?

Requirements:

Other links:

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Other

Culture-specific features

Sometimes a script or language does things that are not common outside of it sphere of influence. This is a loose bag of additional items that weren't previously mentioned.

Requirements:

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What else?

There are many other CSS modules which may need review for script-specific requirements, not to mention the SVG, HTML, Speech, MathML and other specifications.

What else is likely to cause problems for worldwide deployment of the Web, and what requirements need to be addressed to make the Web function well locally?

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If you have comments about this page, send them to [email protected].

Content last changed 2015-12-16 8:04 GMT

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