Re: Arguments against HTML double-sided ruby (was: Re: Memo from ruby disucssion with Roland)

Martin,


> On 2012/02/22 15:51, MURATA Makoto wrote:
>>
>> Should HTML (and CSS) support double-sided ruby?  I think that
>> more discussions are needed before we discuss about the design
>> of HTML markup.
>>
>> First, as I wrote in my mail "Desiderata for automatic layout of
>> double-sided ruby", an important example of double-sided ruby
>> makes automatic formatting and markup design (ruby for ruby,
>> and right-left-swapping) very difficult.  What is the scope of
>> double-sided ruby?
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-cjk/2012JanMar/0067.html
>
>
> I agree that good layout of double-sided ruby is difficult, but there are
> quite a few other layout issues that are difficult to automate, too. Just
> because really good layout is difficult shouldn't mean that we don't create
> markup. As far as I understand, markup and layout (i.e. styling) are
> separate issues when it comes to W3C technology.

But should we introduce double-sided HTML ruby just because there are
rare examples of double-sided ruby such that automatic layout is doable?
Which one listed in http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Rb#Real_Examples
and which one in the Kodansha collection is in the scope?  I have seen
no discussions about the scope so far.  I certainly know markup
and styling are separate issues.

[snip]

>> What is the relationship between ruby and
>> annotations?  Here is one possibility: ruby is just one way for
>> formatting annotations, and we need a generalized mechanism for
>> annotation formatting.
>
>
> That's one way of seeing things, and it's not totally wrong. But there are
> two problems here:
>
> 1) The range of annotations is extremely wide. Ruby are very local and
> small. Other annotations may be long and far away (e.g. at the end of a
> book). It isn't sure at all that the same markup is well suited for all
> these cases. Would you think RDF is a good solution for ruby?

There is nothing wrong in providing annotations for small text
chunk and displaying them as ruby.  As for RDF, it may be
a W3C's favorite choice, but I am not sure if others are committed
to them for identifying text to be annotated.  IDPF might
use EPUBCFI, http://idpf.org/epub/linking/cfi/epub-cfi.html

>
> 2) When we worked on the Ruby Annotation REC, Steven Pemberton proposed that
> we should generalize the concept (he wasn't speaking about annotations in
> general, but glosses). Looking at how far XHTML 2.0 went, I'm glad we
> didn't. If <annotation> (or something similar) would already exist, maybe
> we'd never had any need to define <ruby> in the first place. But currently,
> <annotation> doesn't exist.

So I am arguing that the scope of HTML ruby be limited
to single-sided ruby and we should address all markup and
layout issues around it.  Examples of double-sided ruby are
rare.  Some of them are simply not doable by automatic layout.
Others can be better addressed by supporting kanbun
kuten.  Yet others cause the overlapping ruby-base
or concurrent structure problem.

> What is there in terms of markup (not layout!) that the ruby proposals
> currently floating around wouldn't cover?

Ruby for ruby is certainly not covered.  Is overlapping ruby base covered?

Regards,
Makoto

Received on Friday, 24 February 2012 09:58:17 UTC