i18n comments on directionality and ruby - i18n-issue-214 (mlw-lt-track-issue-90), i18n-issue-215 (mlw-lt-track-issue-91), i18n-issue-241 (mlw-lt-track-issue-101)

Hi i18n WG,

you made various comments on the Ruby and the directionality sections of 
ITS2.0, see numbers in the topic line of this mail and the list below

http://www.w3.org/International/multilingualweb/lt/track/issues/86
https://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/209

https://www.w3.org/International/multilingualweb/lt/track/issues/90
https://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/214

https://www.w3.org/International/multilingualweb/lt/track/issues/91
https://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/215

https://www.w3.org/International/multilingualweb/lt/track/issues/101
https://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/241

I have some general questions and remarks (all personal) on these 
comments. One possibility would be to discuss them on a joint call, e.g. 
the MLW-LT folks could join the i18n WG call 23 January 4-5 p.m. UTC.


Now my thoughts:

1) in the MLW-LT working group, we don't have any experts on 
directionality and ruby. The motivation to have ruby in the ITS2 spec is 
backwards compatibility with ITS1.0, and to to have the markup available 
into other formats like XLIFF. The implementers in MLW-LT are not 
experts in both topics of directionality and ruby.

So would the i18n WG be able to write the "definition" section for 
directionality? See the current section at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-its20-20121206/#directionality-definition
it is rather short: a paragraph and a list describing values.

2) There is no consensus yet about whether ruby should be in the spec or 
not, see i18n-issue-215 and
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2013JanMar/0113.html
What is the thought of the i18n WG on that?

3) Both ruby and directionality are still under development in HTML5. 
Then do you expect stability? Note that ITS2 is planning to move out of 
last call in March; even if we would delay that, we'd still need a clear 
time schedule. If you don't have a timeline at all, it might be safer 
for us to mark things a) as feature at risk or b) non-normative. What 
would be your preference?

4) We write in both the ruby and the directionality section "there is no 
implementation commitment". This is written from the knowledge of the 
MLW-LT WG for ruby (completely) and directionality (the rendering of 
text based on directionality markup). As you can see at
http://tinyurl.com/its20-testsuite-dashboard
that there is no commitment for ruby at all. Do you know other 
implementers that would implement Ruby *as ITS markup*? Note that we are 
not talking about ruby in HTML(5) - such implementations seem to happen 
no matter what ITS does anyway.

Since we have a f2f meeting Wed-Thursday, discussing above topics in a 
joint call or getting your reply as a working group would be very helpful.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Felix

Received on Tuesday, 22 January 2013 11:49:49 UTC