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The W3C Internationalization (I18n) Activity works with W3C working groups and liaises with other organizations to make it possible to use Web technologies with different languages, scripts, and cultures. From this page you can find articles and other resources about Web internationalization, and information about the groups that make up the Activity.
Recent highlights
7 January 09 New tutorial: Creating SVG Tiny Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and other Right-to-Left Scripts
10 December 08 New talk slides: northern bloc
8 December 08 For review: Creating SVG Tiny Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and other Right-to-Left Scripts
23 September 08 New tests: Web fonts
15 August 08 Updated tests & results: Language declarations
8 August 08 New tests & results: CSS encoding detection
All news
New tutorial: Creating SVG Tiny Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and other Right-to-Left Scripts
Right-to-left scripts include Arabic, Hebrew, Thaana and N'ko, and are used by a large number of people around the world. If you are new to dealing with bidirectional text, getting it to display correctly can sometimes appear complex and confusing, but it need not be so. If you have struggled with this or have yet to start, this tutorial should help you adopt the best approach to marking up your content. It also explains enough of how the bidirectional algorithm works for you to understand much better the root causes of most problems, and it addresses some common misconceptions about ways to deal with markup for bidirectional content
After reading this tutorial you should:
- create effective SVG Tiny 1.2 content containing text written in the Arabic or Hebrew (or other right-to-left) scripts
- understand the basics of how the Unicode bidirectional algorithm works, so that you can understand why bidirectional text behaves the way it does, and how to work around problems
- take decisions about the appropriateness of alternatives to markup
New talk slides: northern bloc
Event: northern bloc:Creative Technology Wales, Llandudno, UK
Richard Ishida gave a presentation entitled Gwneud y we fyd-eang yn wirioneddol fyd-eang! (Making the World Wide Web worldwide) on 4 December, 2008. [search keys: talk-2008 talk-ishida]
For review: Creating SVG Tiny Pages in Arabic, Hebrew and other Right-to-Left Scripts
Comments are being sought on this tutorial prior to final release. Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We expect to publish a final version in one to two weeks. [search keys: tutorial-svg-tiny-bidi]
Updated article: An Introduction to Multilingual Web Addresses
Information was updated about support for paths as IRIs in latest browsers. For a detailed list of changes read the full post. [search keys: article-idn-and-iri]
New translation: Daty i czas
Thanks to Ana Backstone the article "Dates and Time" has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated). [search key: article-o-time]
New translation: Obsługa bidi - style CSS czy znaczniki?
Thanks to Sebastian Backstone the FAQ-based article "CSS vs. markup for bidi support" has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated). [search key: qa-bidi-css-markup]
New translation: Tagowanie tekstu bez języka
Thanks to K.Wiśniewski the FAQ-based article "Tagging text with no language" has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated). [search key: qa-no-language]
New tests: Web fonts
These tests explore how and if a user agent supports download of font information over the Web, particularly for complex script support. Fonts are downloaded both as directly as OpenType fonts, and using an EOT wrapper. Both methods tested use the CSS @font-face mechanism.[search key: test-webfonts]
3 new translations: Πολυγλωσσικές Φόρμες, Κώδικες γλώσσας με δύο ή τρία γράμματα, and Μη Αγγλικά στοιχεία
Thanks to the microo.net editor team, Γιώργος Τσιλεδάκης, the FAQ-based articles "Multilingual Forms", "Two-letter or three-letter language codes", and "Non-English tags" have now been translated into Greek (language negotiated). [search keys: qa-forms-utf-8 qa-lang-2or3 qa-non-eng-tags]
New translation: Ημερομηνίες και Χρόνος
Thanks to the microo.net editor team, Γιώργος Τσιλεδάκης, the article "Dates and Time" has now been translated into Greek (language negotiated). [search key: article-o-time]
Questions or comments? ishida@w3.org
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