Abstract
This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Ethiopic script. The target audience includes developers of Web standards and technologies, such as HTML, CSS, Mobile Web, Digital Publications, and Unicode, as well as implementers of web browsers, ebook readers, and other applications that need to render Ethiopic text.
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This document points to resources for Ethiopic script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications about how to support languages written using the Ethiopic script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Ethiopic script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository Ethiopic Language Enablement (elreq), with contributors from the W3C Internationalization Interest Group. It is published by the Internationalization Working Group. The end target for this document is a Working Group Note.
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Some links on this page point to repositories or pages to which information will be added over time. Initially, the link may produce no results, but as issues, tests, etc. are created they will show up.
Links that have a gray color led to no content the last time this document was updated. They are still live, however, since relevant content could be added at any time. When the document is updated, links that now point to results will have their live colour restored.
This document points to resources for Ethiopic script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These resources provide information for developers of Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support languages written using the Ethiopic script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Ethiopic script and how it works see Amharic (Ethiopic) Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as:
Phonology,
Syllables, and
Numbers.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Ethiopic Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Ethiopic script, and prioritises and describes the impact of those gaps on the user.
Gap reports are brought to the attention of spec and browser implementers, and are tracked via the Gap Analysis Pipeline. (Filter for Ethiopic script items)
The document Language enablement index points to this document and others, and provides a central location for developers and implementers to find information related to various scripts.
The W3C also has a repository with discussion threads related to the Ethiopic script, including requests from developers to the user community for information about how scripts/languages work, and a notification system that tracks issues in W3C working groups related to the Ethiopic script. See a list of unresolved questions for Ethiopic experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
The Ethiopic script is a featural syllabary, ie. each symbol typically represents both a consonant and a vowel, but vowel components are indicated by largely standardised adaptations to the base consonant shape.
The Ethiopic script runs left to right in horizontal lines. There is no case distinction.
Modern Amharic generally uses spaces to separate words, but sometimes still uses the Ethiopic wordspace character, instead.
The Ethiopic script blocks in Unicode list over 453 characters. Amharic uses 282 syllable characters: comprising 15 standalone vowel syllables, and the remainder for CV syllables.
Gemination and consonant clusters are not indicated by the script (although some diacritics have been proposed for that, which are encoded in Unicode). Silent vowels are typically indicated using the 6th order -ə syllable, which creates some ambiguity.
The script has only the three just mentioned combining characters, which are rarely used. Characters don't interact, and the baseline is standard.
Ethiopic does have a range of native punctuation. In particular, although words in modern text are increasingly separated by spaces they may be separated by a wordspace character instead.
Ethiopic also has its own numeric digits, which are used in an additive way, rather than in the way numbers are formed in Western text.