This article introduces a number of basic concepts needed to understand other articles that deal with characters and character encodings.

The article has been updated with explanations of the terms ‘user-perceived character’, ‘grapheme-cluster’, ‘typographic character unit’, and ‘glyph’, and a warning about the vague use of the term ‘character’.

Read the article Character encodings: Essential concepts.

This article gives a high level summary of various typographic strategies for wrapping text at the end of a line, for a variety of scripts.

Read the article.

The article Approaches to line breaking has been significantly revised and is out for another wide review. We are looking for comments by Thursday 2 August.

This article gives a high level summary of various typographic strategies for wrapping text at the end of a line, for a variety of scripts. It complements the article Approaches to full justification.

Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on this link, or on “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)

The W3C today launched the Internationalization Initiative to expand core work in further internationalizing the Web. “Supporting the W3C Internationalization Initiative with funding or expertise is a vital way that our Web community creates the future of the global Web,” said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. W3C thanks Alibaba, Apple, Advanced Publishing Lab (Keio University), Monotype, and The Paciello Group who have stepped up as Founding Sponsors. Read about the Sponsorship Program and the press release and testimonials.

The article Approaches to line breaking is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Wednesday 4 July.

This article gives a high level summary of various typographic strategies for wrapping text at the end of a line, for a variety of scripts. It complements the article Approaches to full justification.

Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on this link, or on “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)

A final draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web: String Matching is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Tuesday 29 May.

This document builds on the document Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals to provide authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference on string identity matching on the World Wide Web, in order to increase interoperability.

All comments are welcome. Please raise them as github issues. To make it easier to track comments, please raise separate issues or emails for each comment, and point to the section you are commenting on using a URL.

Работа с языком в HTML (руководство) (Working with language in HTML)

Объявление языка в HTML (Declaring language in HTML)

Языковые тэги в HTML и XML (Language tags in HTML and XML)

Выбор языковых тэгов (Choosing a Language Tag)

Установка языковых настроек в браузере (Setting language preferences in a browser)

These articles were translated into Russian thanks to Dmitri Kuznetsov, of the Russian Translation Agency, Taushiro Inc.

A First Public Working Draft of Text Layout Requirements for the Arabic Script was published.

This document describes the basic requirements for Arabic 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 users of Arabic scripts. Currently the document focuses on Standard Arabic and Persian. Public comments are welcome, please raise them as github issues.

An update for the article Inline markup and bidirectional text in HTML has just been published.

This article tells you how to write HTML where text with different writing directions is mixed within a paragraph or other HTML block (ie. inline or phrasal content). The article has been updated to bring it in line with recent browser developments and to simplify the guidelines. Examples are linked to live versions, and indications are given for which features are supported by which browsers.

A draft update for the article Inline markup and bidirectional text in HTML is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by Tuesday 12 December.

This article tells you how to write HTML where text with different writing directions is mixed within a paragraph or other HTML block (ie. inline or phrasal content). The article has been updated to bring it in line with recent browser developments and to simplify the guidelines. Examples are linked to live versions, and indications are given for which features are supported by which browsers.

Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on this link, or on “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)