Re: I18n comment: defining letter

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 ishida@w3.org wrote:
>
> There should be a definition of what constitutes a 'letter'. We propose 
> that this should be the first *grapheme cluster* (after any punctuation 
> such as you list).
> 
> We believe that the specification must, as a minimum, require a letter 
> to be defined as a 'default grapheme cluster', as defined by Unicode 
> http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Grapheme_Cluster_Boundaries 
> [http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Grapheme_Cluster_Boundaries] .
> 
> This would mean, for example, that 0065: e LATIN SMALL LETTER E + 0301: 
> ́ COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT would be handled appropriately.
> 
> The specification should then also state that implementors should 
> implement additional rules based on the language of the text where 
> necesssary.
> 
> This may be particularly important for scripts such as those of south 
> asia, where an initial character appears as part of a syllabic group and 
> may be preceded on the display by a later character, or where the 
> initial character is a ligature.
> 
> The i18n WG will make some attempts toinvestigate further the 
> applicability of ::first-letter styling to other scripts and report 
> back.

The working group discussed this and decided to reject your request. We do 
not believe that specifying this in more detail is particularly useful; 
the :first-letter rendering is intended to be left largely up to the user 
agent, based on per-language rules.

Please let us know if this, as is likely, does not satisfy your request.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'