Re: [css3-counter-styles] Handling ethiopic-numerals and extended CJK numbers

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Reece Dunn <msclrhd@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Section 6.1.2 describes an algorithm to handle an extended set of Chinese,
> Japanese and Korean numbers. The way it is presented is similar to the way
> the other systems are handled, therefore it makes sense for an implementor
> to have a counter style with |system: cjk| and the characters set
> appropriately.
>
> Likewise, the ethiopic-numerals style could similarly be handled via a
> |system: ethiopic| counter style with the appropriate characters set.
>
> These and any extended symbol sets would be vendor prefixed as Counter
> Styles 3 currently stands, but could possibly form part of a Counter Styles
> 4 specification to handle these properly.
>
> Looking at the way numbers are spoken (e.g. "one hundred and sixteen" for
> 116 in British English), the way these are constructed is similar to the way
> ethiopic-numerals are formed [1]. The only difference is that Western
> numbers are split in groups of 3, whereas Ethiopic numbers are split into
> groups of 2. Also, Korean splits numbers into groups of 4.
>
> Therefore, instead of having a specific ethiopic system, they could be
> expressed using something like |system: natural; group-length: 2;|.
>
> This will also help with the CJK extended sets as well, as looking at
> section 6.1.2, the tables use production rules for handling group-length 4
> numbers.
>
> I am interested in spoken forms for numbers as part of my work on a
> Text-to-Speech program and am wondering if I can express spoken cardinal and
> ordinal forms as CSS counter styles.

As far as I can tell, you can't usefully unify the CJK styles, because
they all have slight quirks from each other.

I'm potentially interested in explaining ethiopic-numeric in a real
system, if there are other useful things that can be expressed in the
system as well.  However, doing so is probably something for the next
level of this module.

~TJ