W3C

– DRAFT –
Internationalization Working Group Teleconference

16 January 2025

Attendees

Present
addison, Atsushi, Bert, JcK, Richard, xfq
Regrets
-
Chair
Addison Phillips
Scribe
Bert, xfq

Meeting minutes

Agenda Review

Action Items

<addison> https://github.com/w3c/i18n-actions/issues

<addison> #153

<gb> Action 153 ask PLH what happened with wasm-2 CR since we have an issue open (on aphillips) due 2024-12-26

<addison> close #153

<gb> Closed issue #153

<addison> #152

<gb> Action 152 request FPWD of string-search (on xfq) due 2024-12-26

<addison> close #152

<gb> Closed issue #152

<addison> #150

<gb> Action 150 add string-search to i18n-editors and get an echidna token (on xfq) due 2024-12-19

xfq: Not done yet.

<addison> #148

<gb> Action 148 propose specdev text related to design-principles#464 discussion (on aphillips) due 2024-12-12

<addison> #147

<gb> Action 147 Follow up on normativity warnings about glossary (on aphillips)

<addison> #143

<gb> Action 143 make comments on the encoding issue attached to i18n-activity#1940 (on aphillips) due 2024-11-28

addison: Need to look at 143......

<addison> #142

<gb> Action 142 check if we can publish the new version of jlreq (on himorin) due 2024-11-21

<addison> #135

<gb> Action 135 follow up on XR issue 1393 about locale in session (on aphillips) due 2024-10-17

<addison> #127

<gb> Action 127 make a list of shared topics of interest between TG2 and W3C-I18N (on aphillips) due 2024-09-30

<addison> #89

<gb> Action 89 update i18n specs to support dark mode (on xfq) due 2024-04-18

<addison> #33

<gb> Action 33 Close issues marked `close?` or bring to WG for further review (on aphillips)

addison: I closed some

<addison> #7

<gb> Action 7 Remind shepherds to tend to their awaiting comment resolutions (Evergreen) (on aphillips, xfq, himorin, r12a, bert-github) due 18 Jul 2023

<addison> #4

<gb> Action 4 Work with respec and bikeshed to provide the character markup template as easy-to-use markup (on aphillips) due 27 Jul 2023

Info Share

xfq: There is a formal objection on CSS, but it's on the agenda already.

<xfq> https://www.w3.org/TR/clreq/

<addison> https://www.w3.org/TR/string-search/

xfq: clreq, with restructure of language matrix. Published to TR ^^

RADAR Review

<addison> https://github.com/orgs/w3c/projects/91/views/1

addison: No incoming requests

Bert: Media Capabilities not yet

Pending Issue Review

<addison> https://github.com/w3c/i18n-activity/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Apending

<addison> #1971

<gb> Issue 1971 not found

<addison> i18n-activity#1971

<gb> Issue 1971 Clarification on `unicode-bidi` for `input type text` and `ruby` (by w3cbot) [pending] [tracker] [s:html] [Agenda+]

addison: What seems interesting is issue 1971.

<addison> whatwg/html#10896

<gb> Issue 10896 Clarification on `unicode-bidi` for `input type text` and `ruby` (by Ahmad-S792) [topic: rendering] [topic: forms] [i18n-tracker]

addison: I'm starting to think about it.
… Please, have a look.

How to make list markers stand upright in vertical text

<r12a> https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/questions/qa-upright-counters-in-vertical.html#layout

r12a: Japanese discussion about space around counters. I added a section about that.
… There' sbeen quite a bit more change to the article.

addison: Home work for next week?

ACTION: addison: remind folks to review the qa-upright-counters-in-vertical doc for next time

<gb> Created action #154

Normativity of i18n-glossary

addison: We talked last time with Philippe about the glossary, about making it a Rec, a Registry...

xfq: It feels weird to make it Rec track or a Registry. But there are a few (not many) definitions that look normative.
… So we may make it normative in the end.

addison: We will have to make separation between the normative and non-normative definitions.

r12a: First step is to find out which defs are normative. Who has the action to do that?

addison: No one now.

xfq: If we use Unicode def...

ACTION: addison: review glossary definitions for normativity or candidates for normativity

<gb> Created action #155

addison: It won't separate neatly, some defs are imported, some are informative...
… I can start make a table.

xfq: Sometimes a part of a def is normative and some parts are illustrative.

Bert: I do think visually separating the normative and non-normative parts is the best way
… although it will have to be a lot of work

addison: I think that's valid

atsushi: Wondered if we can simplify things.
… Terminology.

r12a: Let's look at what we're dealing with. Probably not many at all.
… The ones that point to Unicode are not normative in our glossary. And shouldn't be exported.

addison: Most of it not written in normative style.

CSS Font Fingerprinting

<addison> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/member-i18n-core/2025Jan/0001.html

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-review-comments/2025Jan/0000.html

xfq: At TPAC, I had a meeting with folks from CSS, PING and TAG.
… We discussed the issue.
… We had a rough consensus. We should give the user options to configure local fonts.
… Brave browser is in Privacy group, but couldn't attend the meetings.
… CSS received a Formal Objection from Brave.
… They don't want the compromise.

<addison> Chris Lilley wrote this for TPAC: https://www.w3.org/2024/09/font-i18n-privacy.html

xfq: The spec allows an implementation to either allow or disallow local fonts to balance privacy and i18n.
… Brave was not satisfied.

r12a: I think I saw that Peter Snyder (Brave) agrees that uses can have control.

<r12a> see:

<r12a> ----

<r12a> If the Web is going to flourish and win over other application platforms,

<r12a> it's not sufficient to pose such concerns in an either/or choice and stop

<r12a> there (or to ignore Web users who need the platform to both protect their

<r12a> privacy AND include top-tier internationalization support). Yet,

<r12a> unfortunately, this is exactly what the WG has done over the 4+ years we've

<r12a> urged them to address this issue. It's possible the correct solution hasn't

<r12a> been proposed yet, but that's a reason to keep working on the problem, not

<r12a> leave it be.

<r12a> ---

addison: s/ that users/ that users

<Bert> s|addison: s/ that uses/ that users|

<addison> Chris's doc quotes CSS4 as saying:

<addison> ---

<addison> The default set of installed fonts will vary by UA, platform, and locale; it is important that users be able to customise which installed fonts are available for rendering web pages and to which generic font families, if any, these fonts are mapped.

<addison> ---

r12a: The quote above seems to say that users need to control this.

xfq: CSS needs to work on it. Anything we can do?

<addison> https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-matching-algorithm

addison: My quote is from this spec ^^

<addison> > UAs may choose a hybrid approach, where some user-installed fonts are initially exposed for internationalization, but others aren’t. Again, users should be able to customise this starting set.

addison: It also says ^^ (‘hybrid approach’).

<r12a> UAs are expected to also provide a convenient means for users to add and subtract fonts to meet their particular needs.

addison: the ‘should’ is not capitalized, not clear if it is a normative word.

addison: Does CSS want us to say anything?

r12a: It's between CSS and Brave. But the CSS spec doesn't seem as black & white as the FO says.

addison: We have a call with CSS soon.

Specdev changes related to TAG design-principles

<addison> We've been working with TAG to align the guidance in our document vs. design-principles. Addison had an action to propose text. Let's review the PR.

<addison> w3c/bp-i18n-specdev#149

<gb> Pull Request 149 Address differences between DESIGN-PRINCIPLES and SPECDEV (by aphillips) [Agenda+] [Best Practice] [normative]

addison: We noticed our doc didn't agree with the TAG's design principles.

<addison> https://deploy-preview-149--bp-i18n-specdev.netlify.app/#char_string

addison: I attempted to make changes to specdev, see the pull request and preview ^^
… Ours *looked* different but isn't essentially different. This change spells out when to use USVString and DOMString.

xfq: It kind of phrased the guidance the other way round.

addison: I want to try and get the TAG to use our text.

addison: We want most interface definitions to use DOMString, and we don't want them to mix DOMString and USVStriing.

addison: If the TAG's design principles are wrong, we don't have to be consistent with them.
… Similar to discussion about NFC. Normalizing is probably a good idea, but nobody is requiring it.
… I should probably add something about interface definitions.

Bert: not specific to this spec but I was wondering in general how specific to JS this discussion was
… DOMString seems to be a rather strange thing that I don't encounter anywhere else

addison: TAG and WHATWG would like to claim this is for the web platform as a whole
… in practice, that means JS and DOM strings

Bert: I'm not sure about JSON

addison: MessageFormat 2 required checking surrogate pairs but we removed that, at least for the text parts.

Bert: MessageFormat 2 it's not more like DOMString but more like USVString?

AOB?

addison: We have a CSS joint meeting on Tuesday.

xfq: Regrets for next three meetings.

addison: Will you have to time to the reviews before then?

xfq: Better let somebody else do them.

atsushi: It's only proposed amendments, isn't it?
… I can do WebRTC in next two weeks.

addison: I'll take the VC specs

Summary of action items

  1. addison: remind folks to review the qa-upright-counters-in-vertical doc for next time
  2. addison: review glossary definitions for normativity or candidates for normativity
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 242 (Fri Dec 20 18:32:17 2024 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/atthat/at 143.../

Succeeded: s/ that uses/ that users

Failed: s|addison: s/ that uses/ that users|

Maybe present: r12a

All speakers: addison, atsushi, Bert, r12a, xfq

Active on IRC: addison, Bert, r12a, xfq