Internationalization Working Group Teleconference - 28 August 2025

https://www.w3.org/2025/08/28-i18n-minutes.html

Here is the meeting summary:

Quick recap

The WG discussed ongoing tasks and updates, including welcoming a new member Joel. We examined Tim Bray's RFC 9839 on RDF character issues and discussed a new article on number, currency, and unit formatting. The group also addressed challenges with web accessibility guidelines for non-Western scripts and discussed the status of a task force, including communication methods and global inclusion efforts.

Next steps

Addison to nudge the Global Inclusion group regarding the orthography issue and add a comment to issue #4263 linking to the meeting minutes.
Team members to subscribe to the public Global Inclusion mailing list if not already subscribed.
Joel to provide comments on Fuqiao's number, currency and unit formatting article by tomorrow.
John to review Fuqiao's article in the coming week.
Fuqiao to adjust the question in the article to be more specific about formatting numbers, currencies and units using JavaScript.
Addison to bug PLH about the XML task.
Addison to follow up on the Zenab issue.
Summary

Team Updates and New Member Welcome

The team discussed ongoing tasks and updates, including the status of various issues and the need to follow up on pending items such as the XML task. Addison welcomed Joel, a new member with a background in internationalization, and noted that Joel would not be able to attend the upcoming TPAC meeting due to a conflict with the Unicode Technical Workshop. The team reviewed the review radar, noting no new incoming requests and highlighting that Fuqiao has a depth review pending, with a reminder that there is only a month and a half left.

RDF Character Handling Discussion

The group discussed Tim Bray's RFC 9839, which addresses problematic characters in RDF. Addison expressed concern that the document might be misinterpreted as complete guidance when it is actually incomplete. John defended the document, noting that it was an improvement over previous work and that the RDF community was already aware of the issues it addresses. The group agreed to put the discussion on hold for now, as it is not urgent, but may revisit it in the future to provide more comprehensive guidance on handling problematic characters in RDF.

Number Formatting Article Review

The team discussed a new article on number, currency, and unit formatting, which xfq had drafted and shared for review. Joel and Addison provided feedback, with Joel suggesting a clarification about locale settings and server-side population of attributes. Addison noted that the article could be more specific to JavaScript-based dynamic formatting. The team agreed to review the article further before sending it for wider review, with Joel planning to add his comments the next day. Addison mentioned an upcoming discussion about message format standards, which might provide additional context for the article.

Web Accessibility Guidelines for Non-Western Scripts

The team discussed challenges with web accessibility guidelines for non-Western scripts, particularly the limitations of using a simplified table approach to represent diverse language requirements. Addison and Richard agreed that while a general glossary definition for orthography might be useful, the current approach of listing only five similar languages is insufficient and not scalable. They concluded that a more comprehensive solution would involve separate language-specific guidelines, rather than trying to consolidate all requirements into a single table, though they acknowledged this would require more detailed documentation work.

GitHub Task Force Issue Discovery

Addison and ri discussed finding an open issue on GitHub related to a task force, which was eventually located in the COGA repository. They discovered a list of issues, including feedback from Coga, and noted that the task force struggled to get going.

Task Force Communication Challenges

The group discussed the status of a task force and its communication methods, noting that while emails were being sent, some participants were not receiving them. They mentioned that the IACG had added an accessibility and internationalization community group, with some members from COGA, but there had been limited recent activity in the COGA repos. Richard suggested signing up for the public global inclusion list, though noted it was moving slowly, and Addison and Richard confirmed they were not attending the associated calls due to time constraints.

Global Inclusion and Project Concerns

The group discussed the need for more involvement in global inclusion efforts and reviewed recent contributions to an article on internationalization and localization. Addison suggested filing an issue or adding a comment to highlight concerns about the current direction of the project. The team agreed to consider these actions and subscribe to the mailing list for further updates.