Abstract
This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Mongolian 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 Mongolian text.
Status of This Document
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document at the time of its publication. A list of current W3C
publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found
in the W3C technical reports index at
https://www.w3.org/TR/.
This document points to resources for Mongolian 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 Mongolian script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Mongolian script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository Mongolian Language Enablement (mlreq), 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 Mongolian 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 Mongolian script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Mongolian script and how it works see Mongolian Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as:
Phonology,
Vowels,
Consonants,
and
Numbers.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Mongolian Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Mongolian 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 Mongolian 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 Mongolian 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 Mongolian script. See a list of unresolved questions for Mongolian experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
The Mongolian script is an alphabet, ie. a writing system in which both consonants and vowels are indicated.
Modern Mongolian can be written using a subset of the letters available in the Mongolian Unicode block. The remainder are used for writing Todo, Sibe, and Manchu, or for writing foriegn words, especially in Tibetan and Sanskrit.
Mongolian text runs top to bottom in vertical lines and (unusually) the lines flow left to right.
The script is cursive, ie. letters in a word are joined. All letters join both on the left and right.
Words are separated by spaces, but also contain narrow spaces that precede suffixes and may produce shaping differences to the surrounding letters. These are part of the word, and the parts on either side should not be separated.
Modern Mongolian uses 16 basic consonant letters and 11 more for representing foreign sounds.
In the Traditional Mongolian alphabet vowels are written using 8 vowel letters, including one for foreign sounds.
Mongolian has separate code points for each sound in Mongolian, but many of these look indistinguishable from each other when rendered. This creates difficulties for novices to reproduce Mongolian text without access to the source..
Vowel reduction is a significant feature of Mongolian. Non-initial short vowels are reduced to vestiges or to zero, and non-initial long vowels in the orthography are reduced to short vowel length.
Vowel harmony is another key feature, grouping vowels in a way that indicates a front or back position for the tongue root (ATR).
The script is monocameral.
There is a set of Mongolian digits.