Re: Generalizing Markup for Interlinear Text Presentation

Florian,

I am grateful for the response, thank you and better late than never as the
saying goes. The primary limitations that I have encountered is support to
present more than one line of interlinear text bound to and aligned with
one or more characters in the base text. The individual lines must also be
independent from one another and will have separate semantics.  Nested Ruby
markup at first appears to be a layout solution but the overlapping markup
problem intervenes in some layout use cases.

CSS work arounds are available to create the desired visual effects, but
are really only suitable for a single browser and version.  The most
successful work around leads to duplication of the base text for each
interlinear line needed. A standard for multiline interlinear layout
requirements should address the portability and duplication issues.

The pages indexed in the link below provide a description of the Zaima
practice, a document model, use-cases, and browser test pages.  If time is
limited I would direct you to the model and use-cases pages first. Note
that the HTML+CSS sample demonstrations are very, very sensitive to
browser, browser version and font choices and have been optimized for
Chrome 61 and higher:

  http://w3c.github.io/elreq/zaima/

The model document attempts to present a general solution for Chant
semantics, then develops markup that is specific to Zaima documents.  I am
not familiar with the special layout requirements of other chant traditions
but simple inspection indicates that many requirements are common.

I'm sparing some details now but am happy to respond to questions.

thank you,

-Daniel


On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 10:50 PM Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Sorry for the very late reply.
>
> Other than the fact that ruby is called ruby and not a more general term,
> could you give some details about what is missing from the existing
> technologies (markup and css) to be able to adequately represent the kind
> of interlinear text you are thinking about?
>
> —Florian
>
> > On Nov 28, 2017, at 12:35, Daniel Yacob <yacob@geez.org> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > HTML markup support for interlinear text is limited to Ruby annotation
> use cases. Arguably Ruby is the most common and best understood interlinear
> writing practice. There are other practices that have layout needs in
> common with Ruby but then have their own additional presentation
> requirements. While there may be many uses cases for interlinear text, I'm
> personally only familiar with staffless chant notation (e.g. Znamenny,
> Syric, Byzantine, Ethiopic, Hebrew, etc).
> >
> > Could the W3C WG for HTML take on the bigger problem of tag support for
> interlinear text layout?  Ruby might then be treated as a special case of
> interlinear text and chant as another.  Both could apply a common base tag
> set, then more specialized tags as needed.
> >
> > I realize that this approach throws a wrench into established Ruby
> markup, which could be grandfathered in and deprecated over time, or not.
> My main thrust here is to raise the need for broader interlinear text
> layout support under HTML and make myself available to discuss requirements
> with interested parties.
> >
> > thank you,
> >
> > -Daniel
>
>