w3c / i18n-drafts

A place to edit articles, tutorials, and the like for the /International subtree of the W3C site. Also, captures issues and comments.

i18n-drafts

A place to edit articles, tutorials, and the like for the /International subtree of the W3C site. Also, captures issues and comments.

Note that this is only a temporary location for articles, etc., while they are being edited and approved. The canonical location for the resulting pages is under https://www.w3.org/International/.

To view a page as HTML, go to https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/ and add the appropriate path to the file you want to view. You'll need to provide the filename plus language extension as a minimum, eg. https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/articles/vertical-text.en

If you want to translate one or more of these resources, see the Translation intructions page.

Contributing

Editors should be familiar with and use the following:

• GitHub guidelines for working with i18n documents
• Editorial guidelines for working with i18n documents

i18n-drafts's Issues

Feedback on questions/qa-i18n

source [pl]

Typo in word 'irozwijaniem', should be 'i rozwijaniem'.

[questions/qa-choosing-encodings] warning about PUA and Shift_JIS and GB18030

source [en]

from Jungshik Shin:

Richard, the article you pointed to has the following about PUA:

The x-user-defined encoding is a single-byte encoding whose lower half is ASCII and whose upper
half is mapped into the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA). Like the PUA in general, using this encoding
on the public Internet is best avoided because it damages interoperability and long-term use.

What do you think of adding a similar warning about PUA and Shift_JIS and GB18030? I'm rather disappointed that GB 18030 2005 still has a lot of PUA code points (after converting to Unicode) even though there are regular Unicode code points available. See whatwg/encoding#22 (and https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=28740#c1 : note that my comment about remapping in GB 18030:2005 turned out to be incorrect. Only one PUA codepoint was remapped to a regular code point between 2000 and 2005).

[tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/index]

source [en]

Okay, I'm not at all computer savvy but it looks like I'm going to have to dig in a try to figure out this coding business, because after 3 years of trying to get Google's help, it doesn't seem any is forthcoming. We are a small non-profit with a very small budget working with people with disabilities. We, ourselves, are primarily people with disabilities. Your website shows 88 errors for us when we check for accessibility. We fight with government agencies for them to make their websites accessible and yet if they looked at ours, they will see our 88 errors. How embarrassing for us and, actually, how embarrassing for Google. How you all can get away with not following the ADA is beyond me. One of your people told a computer tech I once hired that it was a matter of, "Your website is free, it's not likely that Google is going to put any effort into your small problem of accessibility." As such, I am going to print out your manual and do my best. I hope I don't screw anything up. That's all we need.

Sincerely,

Mary D. Lopez, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Independence Empowerment Center

[questions/qa-escapes] Various things in ‘Use in XHTML’ section

source [en]

`<p><strong class="leadin" id="useinxhtml">Use in XHTML.</strong>`

The following section is rather about XML than XHTML. Shouldn’t the heading reflect this? Maybe “Use in XML / XHTML”?

`<p>If you use <a class="print" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html">HTML-defined character entity references </a> (such as <span class="kw">&amp;aacute;</span>)`

The link refers to the HTML 4 spec. Maybe better link to HTML5 https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syntax.html#named-character-references?

Here it still says “character entity references”. Should be changed to HTML5 speak “named character references” as otherwise in the article.

<span class="kw">&amp;aacute;</span> should be marked up as <code>&amp;aacute;</code>.

[articles/ruby/markup] Links are broken

source [en]

It seems most of links in the page are broken. Probably because they point to some pages in "/International" which is not available on github.io.

[articles/definitions-time/index] incremental time mapping

source [en]

However, incremental time is not usually seen directly by users, but is mapped to a field-based time format for human consumption.

Technically the above quote isn't quite right. Incremental times are usually mapped to local time values (the display value). They may be serialized as field-based times for interchange. So I'd mention both. Perhaps:

However, incremental time is not usually seen directly by users, but is mapped to a field-based time format for interchange or to local/wall time for human consumption.

broken link [questions/qa-html-language-declarations]

source [de]

broken link http://rishida.net/utils/subtags/

correct link http://r12a.github.io/apps/subtags/

[questions/qa-what-is-encoding]

source [en]

Hi,

I was looking for clarification on the following paragraph in your article:

"This Unicode encoding is a good choice because you can use a single character encoding to handle any character you are likely to need. This greatly simplifies things. Using Unicode throughout your system also removes the need to track and convert between various character encodings."

1. "Using Unicode throughout your system....." : Should this not be **Using UTF-8 encoding** .... because as I understand the Unicode character set can be encoded using a number of different character encodings (like UTF-8/16/32 etc..). If so, then how would using Unicode remove the need to need to track and convert between various character encodings?

[articles/ruby/index]

It appears that the links at the bottom for “Using ruby markup” and “Styling ruby text” lead to 404s. Other than that, this looks very nice and comprehensive.

source [en]

[articles/definitions-time/index]

source [en]

The document would be improved by using the terminology and glossary of ISO 8601. As written it uses ambiguous, colloquial terminology that is somewhat misleading and does not correspond to current usage.

It should also call out lessor known issues with current practice, such as the assumption that there are 60 seconds in a minute; in fact for precise time keeping, some minutes have 61 seconds just as some Februarys have 29 days. Systems that do not allow for this are broken by design.

Finally, it is not correct that the differences between GMT and UTC do not affect average users. Many systems in use every day would be critically affected by the difference if it were not handled correctly. Further, the Unix millisecond standard is already having issues, with modern file systems tracking modification times to nanosecond to allow for proper synchronization.

Feedback on language-decl/index

source [en]

Test only

test

please ignore

[questions/qa-date-format] add info about html5 date markup

source [en]

We should mention the date & time markup in HTML5, esp. how it's useful to indicate the locale-sensitive date that appears on rendering.

[questions/site-conneg] example .var file

source [en]

“Here is an example of a .var file:”

It might be worth noting that this is an example ot the qa-lang-priorities.var file.

Feedback on questions/qa-css-lang

source [en]

Hello,
It may be worth to mention a cascading behaviour which is not obvious at a first glance. You use the lang attribute to apply a style property for a given language, and the same property is also or already set by some other mechanism (e.g. class or element selector). Which one applies?

Example: Suppose the CSS
<style> .rouge { color:red; } lang(ar) { color:green; } </style>

and the HTML:
<p class="rouge" lang="ar"> ar-text is red here </p>

It is the style given by the class attribute which applies. class style overrides lang style because lang is a pseudo class.

But consider:
<p class="rouge" lang="ar"> ar-text is red here <em> but em-ar-text is (unintentionally?) green here</em> </p>

inside <em> lang style overrides class style, because <em> matches the lang="ar" which applies in the end. Moreover, this doesn't happen with *[lang="ar"].

Some remark with the following:
suppose the CSS:
<style> div { color : red} </style>

<div lang="ar"> ar-text is green here</p>

One could expect the div style to apply, but it is the lang style which applies here. Both for lang(ar) ou *[lang="ar"].

Any opinion?

Najib

Complete "Authoring HTML with bidi localization in mind"

Finish editing this article

This advice was built into the article Structural Markup & RTL Text in HTML. No need for a separate article.

[questions/qa-floating-times]

source [en]

The last paragraph says "But you'll want to use a consistent (or floating) frame of reference when retrieving the record."
It is not clear to me which "record" is meant. Note that this is the only reference to a record in the document.

[articles/ruby] do something about TR/ruby?

With all the changes in ruby for HTML5 and documentation in general, do we need to do something about the ancient Spec called "Ruby"?

[tutorials/bidi-xhtml/index] misaligned references to articles

source [en]

In the section "Markup for text direction" the first paragraph doesn't seem to be correct.

In this section we cover the basics of markup for text direction. The first article deals with setting direction at a document and structural level. The second with inline text elements – this is somewhat more complicated than the former, because it is where you have to handle bidirectional text.

The quoted text should reference the second and third articles, respectively, not the first and second.

I ran the German translation through Google Translate and it appears to have the same issue as well.

[questions/site-conneg] Note that localStorage requires JavaScript?

source [en]

“You can do the same thing with localStorage, if you prefer that to cookies.”

It might be worth noting that localStorage requires JavaScript in order to work, while cookies work without such dependency.

[questions/site-conneg] Make URIs consistent

source [en]

“…hard-wired to a particular language version, such as qa-site-conneg.en.html. […] The only time you would use qa-site-conneg.en is when…”

Once with suffix .html, the other time without. It should be the same both times, I think. (My preference would be qa-site-conneg.en without suffix .html.)

[questions/qa-who-uses-unicode] Update needed

source [en]

rewrite the answer to show current status

[questions/site-conneg] MultiViews in camel case

source [en]

“multiviews or type maps”

Usually spelled in camel case: MultiViews. Maybe even in monospace font as localStorage above.

This applies also to the link title how to use multiviews.

Feedback on questions/qa-display-capabilities

source [en]

"Although a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 is predominant in the US, Europe, and Japan, in some areas, such as South East Asia, smaller screen sizes such as 800 x 600 may still be common."

Is this still true? Are the figures correct?

[articles/definitions-time/index] zone offset

source [en]

Zone offsets other than 30 and 45 minutes can also exist, including historically. So I would relax the text slightly to say something like:

Usually offsets are at hour intervals from UTC, but offsets can also be irregular, such as including an additional 30 or 45 minute difference.

[articles/definitions-time/index] mention "summer time" in title

source [en]

The section heading is just "Daylight Savings Time". But in many parts of the world (ahem!) it is called "Summer Time" instead. Mention both in the section title?

[articles/inline-bidi-markup/index]

source [en]

The very last section, about the BDO element, gives an example in Hebrew. It would be of use to give an example in Arabic too. I would expect to see the isolate glyphs used in an example such as this, where each memory location is an individual block, but BDO might just present the arabic joined up but the word spelt sdrawkcab (I haven't tested to see). You could also use a monospace font for computer memory. Additionally there is a comma in the example that is not in the presented source code.

Feedback on vertical-text

source

Test issue. Please ignore.

[questions/site-conneg] Arabic script

source [en]

“If you were English and faced with a Persian page, and if the link to the English page was written in Arabic, you might not find it easily!”

You might want to add ‘script’ in order to prevent confusion with Arabic language:

If you were English and faced with a Persian page, and if the link to the English page was written in Arabic script, you might not find it easily!

Feedback on questions/qa-i18n

source [pl]

Incorrect translation:

'Internacjonalizacja jest często zapisywana jako "l10n", gdzie 10 to liczba liter pomiędzy 'l' i 'n' w angielskim słowie "localization".'

should be:

'Internacjonalizacja jest często zapisywana jako "i18n", gdzie 18 to liczba liter pomiędzy 'i' i 'n' w angielskim słowie "internationalization".'

[articles/ruby/markup] The blank <rt> is not needed in the last example

source [en]

In section "Partially overlapping ruby", the article says

... since it allows you to leave blank rt elements where needed

but actually the blank rt is not needed at all. You can safely remove the blank rt in this example without changing the behavior, I believe.

[articles/ruby/index] "alongside" incorrect

source [en]

In the description of ruby for simplified Chinese it says:

In Mainland China, Simplified Chinese characters are typically annotated with pinyin transliterations alongside each character.

This suggests bopomofo type placement. Use above or below instead?

[articles/ruby/index]

source [en]

The explanation I found to be very clear in presenting the types of rubies and their distinctions. I am wishing for a sentence or two to set the cultural context. Such as:

• When do they first appear in literature? In which language first?
• Are rubies taught in the school system? At what grade level?
• Are they found in all categories of literature, or just some? Which?

I assume the following are true since not stated otherwise. Perhaps add a note to clarify if any of these are not the case:

• Ruby text is never a non-letter symbol.
• Ruby text never appears over/beside non-letter symbols (avoided in groups).
• Phonetic ruby never modifies the pronunciation of the text it annotates.
• Semantic ruby never changes the meaning of the text it annotates (strictly a gloss)

Complete questions/site-conneg

Finish work on Routing people to translated pages on the Internationalization Activity subsite [en]

[articles/definitions-time/index] floating time editorial nits

source [en]

I would maybe change:

Although, in some parts of the world, the British 11th June starts or ends on what would be Friday or Sunday in Britain, the date given for the event is always Saturday 11 June.

... to be a little clearer about the "floating" nature of it:

Outside Britain, 11 June starts or ends at a time that would be Friday or Sunday in Britain, the date given for the event is always Saturday 11 June.

Also:

Other examples include...

I might include into the list (even though you've already mentioned a specific event that is a birthday, it's all decorated with Capital Letters of Importance) the concept like "user's birth date"

[questions/qa-ruby] Update needed

source [en]

this article needs updating to cover developments in HTML5.

should it be the intro to a longer article on how to use ruby?

Feedback on questions/qa-css-lang

source [en]

Broken link in the "Longer answer" paragraph. "For more information about support for these selectors see the test results." The test results text links to a dead page at https://www.w3.org/International/tests/html5/css3-selectors-lang/results-lang

[questions/qa-lang-why]#fonts Inconsistent font style (serif vs. sans, weight)

source [en]

In this image zh-* uses a very thin serif style, while ko uses sans of different weights. This can be misleading in a way that it gives readers the impression of how these languages should look like and potentially encourage misuse of such thin serifs in zh web pages.

Adobe's Source Han Sans provides locale variants for all these four languages (zh-Hans -> CN, zh-Hant -> TW, ja -> JP, ko -> KR), and since it is a single typeface itself noises created by font selection can be elliminated. I personally suggest using this family of fonts for example images.

PS: Windows is very well-known for its bug of generating serif fallbacks for sans families in the Chinese community, and it keeps doing so even with the emergence of Microsoft's Chinese Sans like Microsoft YaHei and Microsoft JhengHei. As a result, nobody actually trusts sans-serif for these languages. Using Windows as an example platform is a bad idea for Chinese usage.

[tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/index]

source [en]

Okay, I'm not at all computer savvy but it looks like I'm going to have to dig in a try to figure out this coding business, because after 3 years of trying to get Google's help, it doesn't seem any is forthcoming. We are a small non-profit with a very small budget working with people with disabilities. We, ourselves, are primarily people with disabilities. Your website shows 88 errors for us when we check for accessibility. We fight with government agencies for them to make their websites accessible and yet if they looked at ours, they will see our 88 errors. How embarrassing for us and, actually, how embarrassing for Google. How you all can get away with not following the ADA is beyond me. One of your people told a computer tech I once hired that it was a matter of, "Your website is free, it's not likely that Google is going to put any effort into your small problem of accessibility." As such, I am going to print out your manual and do my best. I hope I don't screw anything up. That's all we need.

Sincerely,

Mary D. Lopez, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Independence Empowerment Center

Feedback on questions/qa-date-format - Promoting YYYY-0MM-DD

source [en]

YYYY-0MM-DD format would present a date in a way that most could clearly interpret in their country. Using the four digit year, three digit month (zero-filled) and a two digit day has many benefits. That way 1973-004-03 , 004-03-1973 and 03-004-1973 are clearly April 3, 1973 and not March 4, 1973 - in most cultures. This would avoid frustrations and reprocessing time to correct mistakes. More importantly in international research, development, medical records and other business that cross international boundaries; critical errors and misunderstandings would be reduced. Thoughts?

[articles/definitions-time/index] : Different Calendaring Systems

source [en]

I personally feel that if date subject is touched upon, we should relate to the way dates are expressed in different calendaring systems. Namely calendaring systems which we different from Gregorian calendar.

While internally dates can be represented in storage in normalized form (from calendaring system perspective in most cases it will be Gregorian calendaring system), for display purpose (interaction with end user) they may be present in different form. Namely they can be converted to calendaring system different from Gregorian one.

There are multiple technologies which allow conversion between different calendaring systems:

1. ICU - http://icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/util/Calendar.html
2. Dojo - https://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/1.10/dojox/date/islamic.html , http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/1.10/dojox/date/umalqura.html , https://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/1.10/dojox/date/hebrew.html

There are several OS which allow modification of calendar type via system preferences:

1. Windows
2. iOS

[articles/ruby/index] Editorial suggestions

source [en]

[These comments are from Martin Dürst.]

Thanks for working so hard on updating all these various outreach materials.

For the "What is ruby?" document, I think the thing most in need of a change is the question. Rather than the unnatural "What is 'ruby annotation'?", what about a more natural
"What are 'ruby' annotations?" ?

It might also be good to have a very small "i" notice explaining why "rubies" is avoided.

The 'intended audience' could also be improved. It says: "anyone who has heard of ruby text and would like to know a little more about it." but the article is perfectly readable for people who haven't heard about ruby yet. And it should avoid the term 'ruby text' because that's used as a specific term later.

Instead of "obscure characters, or characters that the reader is not expected to be familiar with", which to me reads as almost the same thing twice, you use "obscure characters, or characters that have multiple readings". The later is quite often the case in Japan, not only but first and foremost with names.

"On the rare occasions that it is used to express semantic information, Japanese ruby typically appears below horizontal text, and to the left of vertical text.": I'm not an expert, but I seem to remember these being on the same side, as long as that side isn't already used for pronunciation.

"possible to mix both phonetic and semantic ruby": I'd change 'mix' to 'combine', because no real mixing is taking place. It may also be better to use a simple example (one-side pronunciation ruby) first, before an example with two-sided ruby, to avoid the impression that the later is the norm.

For bopomofo, it would be great to have the vertical example also, to make the text even easier to understand.

For mono/group/jukugo ruby, pointers directly to the relevant parts of the Japanese Layout document would probably help.

[articles/ruby/index] The example of pinyin ruby

source [en]

It seems to me pinyin being above the base text is far more common than being below. I am not even aware of any example which mark pinyin below the text before.

Also, pinyin is usually marked with tone marks. So in that example, it should be "zhōng guó huà" instead.

[questions/qa-resizing-backgrounds] update needed

source [de]

updated needed, to take into account latest CSS options

[articles/definitions-time/index]

source [en]

The floating time example is likely to leave readers with the impression that floating times only apply to dates. I suggest including lunch as a second example to show that this may also apply to hours in the day as well as dates. Lunch is usually at twelve noon no matter what time zone you are in, thus floats depending on where you are.

[articles/definitions-time/index] outdated link to Olson database

source [en]

The link in the document is to the old twinsun site.

IANA took over the time zone database (zoneinfo) a couple years ago (BCP175).

The link should go here: https://www.iana.org/time-zones

We should update the WG note for this too....

[articles/definitions-time/index] title of time zone rules section

source [en]

the section is called "time zone rules" but the definition is of "time zone"?

[questions/qa-chars-vs-markup] missing dates in footer

source [pl]

The footer reeds “Angielska wersja dokumentu z dnia $enVersion. Tłumaczenie wykonano dnia $thisVersionPlain GMT” instead of the dates. This applies only to the Polish translation.

[questions/qa-bidi-space]

source [en]

The examples are a little odd. The HTML code sections show "rtl text" and "ltr text", but the illustrations show real text. This leads to some cognitive dissonance when the text refers to the illustration text.

Consider having both the real and explanatory text in the code? For example you could use ruby for the "rtl/ltr text" bits. It would require some behind the scenes bidi markup of course. But the example code and illustrations would match better. Just a thought..

[questions/qa-byte-order-mark] test issue

source [en]

please ignore