Status of This Document
This section describes the status of this
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 is retired and MUST NOT be used for further technical work.
See Arabic Script Resources instead.
🚩 Retired document. Do not use.
This document describes the basic requirements for Urdu 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 users of Arabic scripts.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed as part of the Arabic script enablement initiative, part of the W3C Internationalization Interest Group. It is published by the Internationalization Working Group. The end target for this document is a Working Group Note.
To make it easier to track comments, please raise a separate issue for each comment, and at the start of the issue add a URL pointing to the section you are commenting on.
This document was published by the Internationalization Working Group as
a Group Draft Note using the
Note track.
Group Draft Notes are not endorsed by
W3C nor its Members.
This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other
documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other
than work in progress.
The
W3C Patent
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does not carry any licensing requirements or commitments on this
document.
This document is governed by the
03 November 2023 W3C Process Document.
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.
The aim of this document is to describe the basic requirements for Urdu layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support users of Urdu.
The initial information in this document was created by Richard Ishida (W3C).
See also the GitHub contributors list for the Arabic Script Enablement project, and the discussions.
The aim of this document is to describe the basic requirements for Urdu layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support users of Urdu.
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Urdu orthography and how it works see Urdu (Nastaliq Arabic) Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as: Phonology, Vowels, Consonants, Encoding choices, and Numbers.
This document should contain no reference to a particular technology. For example, it should not say "CSS does/doesn't do such and such", and it should not describe how a technology, such as CSS, should implement the requirements. It is technology agnostic, so that it will be evergreen, and it simply describes how the script works. The gap analysis document is the appropriate place for all kinds of technology-specific information.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Urdu Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in support for Urdu on the Web, 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 it for Urdu)
To complement any content authored specifically for this document, the sections in the document also point to related, external information, tests, GitHub discussions, etc.
The 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 Arabic 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 Arabic scripts. See a list of unresolved questions for Arabic script experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
- Requirements
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- GitHub discussions
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- Tests
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- Gap analysis
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- LE Index
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Arabic script is written from right to left. Numbers, even Arabic numbers, are written from left to right, as is text in a script that is normally left-to-right.
When the main script is Arabic, the layout and structure of pages and documents are also set from right to left.
- GitHub discussions
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- Tests
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- Gap analysis
-
- LE Index
-