Comments on "Requirements for Japanese Text Layout" (1)

  [Message originally sent to www-i18n-comments, but since I have more 
comments, I am resending to this list as well.]

Thanks you very much for the document "Requirements for Japanese Text 
Layout" (http://www.w3.org/TR/jlreq), it's a very useful document. I 
have a few suggestions for corrections below.

Thanks again,
Eric.

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§ 3.3.1, note 1 on Figure 107, add at the end of the first sentence: 
"(because nakastuki alignment has been adopted for single ruby 
characters, and the first approach has been adopted for the case where 3 
or more ruby characters are attached to a single base character)"

§ 3.3.5, case "attaching three or more hiragana ruby characters to a 
single base character", option a (nakatsuki alignment for single ruby). 
I would suggest to add examples to figure 121, to show what happens the 
ruby text cannot overhang the character either before of after the base. 
In other words, four cases just like in figure 122.

§ 3.3.6. "When the length of the ruby text is longer than ... as 
specified in JIS X 4051". I think that "the method of JIS X 4051" needs 
to be explained a bit more. For example, it is my understanding that 
this method, in the case of fig 127, with the character preceding the 
group-ruby being a kana, would allow that kana to "consume" the 1/4 em 
space on the left of the ruby base, but no more. This is somewhat 
dissimilar to the mono-ruby case, which allows to take into account the 
presence of the kana in the first place. In fact, it seems that there 
are two methods: one that prefers "centered-ness" of the ruby over its 
base and is the one explained here for group ruby, and one that prefers 
"avoid expansion in the base" and is the one explained here for mono 
ruby. But I think that either method can be applied to either case.

§ 3.3.7, paragraph below figure 129: "If there is any kanji character in 
a given kanji compound word which needs more than three ruby characters" 
-> "... three or more ruby characters". That one is not in the errata.

§ 3.3.7 There needs to be a mention of Appendix F in this section. 
Furthermore, the relationship between what 3.3.7 describes and what 
appendix F describes needs to be clarified.

§ 3.3.8, "When the length of the ruby text is longer...": the case of 
iteration marks (cl-09) is not listed at all in the list above figure 
135. I suppose that they should go under b. along with hiragana, 
katakana, etc.


§ A. It would be very helpful to have the lists as machine readable data 
files. It would also be very helpful to have a full coverage of Unicode, 
rather than just a subset (

§ A.19. There is probably no need to list U+4EDD 仝 explicitly in this 
table.

§ A.19. It seems to me that U+2116 № NUMERO SIGN should not be in cl-19 
but should be in cl-27. Motivation: ignoring classes 20-25, 28-30 (since 
those are all obviously characterizing a very specific context), and 
looking at the characters which occur in multiple classes, they all fall 
neatly in being in both one of classes 1-8, 12-13, 17-19 ("Japanese" 
context) and in class 27 ("western" context). In other words, it seems 
that there is a layered decomposition:

- japanese vs. western (27) vs. western word space (26)
- inside japanese: 20-25, 28-30 for specific contexts vs. non specific 
japanese context
- inside non specific japanese context: 1-19 based on the character

U+2116 № NUMERO SIGN is the odd man out: it is listed in 19 and in 12. I 
think it was meant to be listed in 27 (where it can certainly occur) and 
in 12.

§ F.2, b. "When a base character is accompanied by more than three ruby 
characters" -> "... three or more ruby characters"

§ F.2., b.2. "consisting of two ideographic characters, each of which is 
accompanied by three and two ruby characters respectively."  delete 
"each of which is"

"[Fig.197] are examples with the same jukugo-ruby as in [Fig.195] and 
[Fig.195] except" -> "...[Fig 195] and [Fig 19*6*]"

Is Table 1 missing, or it  just does not exist?

Tables 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: "cl-25 unit symboles" -> "symbols" (no e)

I don't have a good suggestion, but it would be helpful to arrange for 
the tables to be printable in black and white. The entries on a darker 
background (e.g. in table 4) are hard to read, and the entries with 
lighter background are hard to distinguish.

Also in the tables, there should probably be some mention that the 
handling of classes 17 & 18 is described in § 3.7.4.

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