W3CW3C Internationalization (I18n) Activity: Making the World Wide Web truly world wide!

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Internationalization Techniques:
Authoring HTML & CSS

This page lists links to resources on the W3C Internationalization Activity site and elsewhere that help you author HTML and CSS for internationalization. It is one of several techniques pages. A dynamic version of this page is also available, to help you get an overview and drill down quickly to what you need.

Although the page title refers to 'authoring', it is also relevant to HTML that is produced by scripts and tools, and that may be derived from an authored document in a different format (such as an XML file).

On this page:
Characters • Language • Markup & text • Text direction • Styling & layout • Navigation

Characters

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Getting started

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Background information

Choosing and applying a character encoding

See also

This section is specifically about how to choose a character encoding for your content and ensure that the content is in that encoding.

For information about how to declare the encoding so that the browser knows how to read your content see Declaring the character encoding for HTML and Declaring the character encoding for your CSS stylesheet.

See also the dedicated section about Changing to UTF-8.

Recommendations
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Useful reference links
Spec links
Background reading

  • Document character set

    What is the 'Document Character Set' for XML and HTML, and how does it relate to the encodings I use for my documents?

Other references

  • Unicode over 60 percent of the web

    A Google blog post by Mark Davis. A graph showing the growth of Unicode encodings to over 60% of Web pages (around 80% if you include ASCII-only pages).

  • Who uses Unicode?

    Are corporate Web sites using Unicode right now?  This article is somewhat outdated, now that Unicode accounts for around 80% of pages on the Web.

Changing to UTF-8

See also

This section is specifically about how migrate your content to the UTF-8 (Unicode) encoding. For more general advice see Choosing and applying a character encoding.

For information about how to declare the encoding so that the browser knows how to read your content see Declaring the character encoding for HTML and Declaring the character encoding for your CSS stylesheet.

Go to
How to's
Background reading

  • Document character set

    What is the 'Document Character Set' for XML and HTML, and how does it relate to the encodings I use for my documents?

Declaring the character encoding for HTML

See also

This section is specifically about how declare the character encoding of your HTML page.

For advice about which encoding to choose, see Choosing and applying a character encoding.

For further advice about setting the character encoding on the server, see Setting the HTTP charset parameter and Setting character encoding information using .htaccess.

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Useful reference links
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Background reading

  • Serving HTML & XHTML

    Introduces doctypes, mime-types, and the influence of standards- vs. quirks-mode on character encoding declarations.

  • Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS

    Tutorial style article that gathers together and organizes pointers to articles that, taken together, help you understand how to handle the essential aspects of authoring HTML and CSS related to characters and character encodings.

Other links

Declaring the character encoding for a CSS style sheet

See also

This section is specifically about how declare the character encoding of your CSS stylesheet.

For advice about which encoding to choose, see Choosing and applying a character encoding.

For further advice about setting the character encoding on the server, see Setting the HTTP charset parameter and Setting character encoding information using .htaccess.

Go to
How to's
Useful reference links
Spec links
Other links

  • Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS

    Tutorial style article that gathers together and organizes pointers to articles that, taken together, help you understand how to handle the essential aspects of authoring HTML and CSS related to characters and character encodings.

Using escapes to represent characters

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  • Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS

    Tutorial style article that gathers together and organizes pointers to articles that, taken together, help you understand how to handle the essential aspects of authoring HTML and CSS related to characters and character encodings.

Checking the encoding of a document

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How to's
Useful reference links

Changing the encoding of a page in an editor

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How to's

Working with the byte-order mark (BOM)

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  • Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS

    Tutorial style article that gathers together and organizes pointers to articles that, taken together, help you understand how to handle the essential aspects of authoring HTML and CSS related to characters and character encodings.

Handling normalization

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Handling encoding issues in forms

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How to's

  • Multilingual form encoding

    What is the best way to deal with encoding issues in forms that may use multiple languages and scripts?

Using Unicode control codes in text

See also

You may want to represent control codes using character escapes. See Using escapes to represent characters for more information on that.

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Working around unavailable characters/glyphs

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How to's

Using non-ASCII web addresses

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Background reading
Useful reference links
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Language

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Getting started

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Background information

Declaring the overall language of a page

See also

For detailed advice about how to select the right language tags, see Choosing language values.

See also Declaring metadata about the language of the intended audience.

Recommendations
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How to's
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Background reading
Other references
Tests

Identifying in-document language changes

See also

See also Declaring the overall language of a page.

For detailed advice about how to select the right language tags, see Choosing language values.

Recommendations
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Background reading
Other references

Choosing language values

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Declaring metadata about the language(s) of the intended audience

See also

This section is specifically about setting metadata for the document as an object. For information about declaring the language of the document for text-processing purposes, see Declaring the overall language of a page.

For detailed advice about how to select the right language tags, see Choosing language values.

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Indicating the language of a link destination

See also

For advice about how to select the right language tags, see Choosing language values.

See also Linking to localized content in the Navigation section.

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Setting & changing browser language preferences

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How to's

Using Accept-Language for locale setting

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How to's

Markup & text

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Getting started

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Background information

Working with composite strings and string re-use

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  • Working with Composite Messages

    Why you need to be very careful about splitting up and reusing text on-screen. The linguistic differences between languages can lead to real headaches for localizers and may in some cases make a reasonable translation impossible to achieve.

  • Re-using Strings in Scripted Content

    Things to be aware of if you plan to use the same text string in different places on your site or user interface.

Other references

Using ruby markup

See also

This section is specifically about how to use markup for ruby annotations. For information about styling ruby see Styling ruby text.

Go to
How to's

  • Ruby extension markup

    Gives examples of how ruby markup can be used per the HTML5 ruby extension spec.

  • Ruby markup

    Overview of the Ruby Annotation specification (in W3C tutorial, Ruby Markup and Styling)

Spec links
Background reading

  • Requirements for Japanese Text Layout

    Mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051, however, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051.

  • Use Cases & Exploratory Approaches for Ruby Markup

    Discussion about what is needed in the HTML5 specification, and possibly other markup vocabularies, to adequately support ruby markup. It looks at a number of use cases and how well they are supported by the various markup models.

  • CJKV Information Processing

    Useful information about ruby in general (Ken Lunde's book, CJKV Information Processing, ISBN 1-56592-224-7, especially chapters 6 and 7)

Other references

  • Ruby Annotation Recommendation

    W3C Recommendation that defines markup for ruby, in the form of an XHTML module. The HTML5 markup model should eventually replace this specification.

  • CSS3 Ruby Module

    W3C Working Draft that defines how ruby elements can be styled in various different ways. This draft is likely to change significantly as it is reworked to support the HTML5 markup model. (For more about styling ruby see Styling ruby text).

  • XHTML 1.1, 3. The XHTML 1.1 Document Type

    Ruby Annotation inthe XHTML 1.1 spec (bottom of the page)

  • Implementing the Ruby Module

    Sample module implementations of the Ruby Annotation Specification in several schemas (W3C Personal Note)

Working with form controls

See also

In the Characters section see Handling encoding issues in forms.

In the section Text Direction see Managing text direction in form controls.

In the section Styling & Layout see Working with names and Working with date formats.

Go to
How to's

  • Sorting select options

    As part of a form, I have a list of terms in a drop-down box. Why are they not correctly sorted when I translate the items in the list?

Indicating what should and should not be translated

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Spec links

Text direction

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Getting started

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Background information

Setting up a right-to-left page

See also

This section is about setting up the default direction for a whole page. For information about working with text direction changes inside the document see Changing the direction of a block element and Mixing text direction inline.

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Setting direction on block elements

See also

For information about setting up the default direction for a whole page see Setting up a right-to-left page.

See also Managing direction in form controls.

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Tests

Managing text direction in form controls

See also

See also Setting direction on block elements.

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Mixing text direction inline

See also

Related sections include Handling parentheses and other mirrored characters, and Overriding the Unicode bidirectional algorithm.

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Handling parentheses and other mirrored characters

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Overriding the Unicode bidirectional algorithm

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Styling & layout

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Preparing for text expansion during translation

Recommendations
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How to's
Background reading

  • Text size in translation

    Overview of text expansion issues.

  • Display capabilities

    Do I need to worry because display capabilities (screen sizes, number of colors, etc.) of computers vary in other countries?

  • Sliding Doors of CSS

    Douglas Bowman's article in A List Apart about how to layer background images, allowing them to slide over each other to create certain effects. (A note from the editors: While brilliant for its time, this article no longer reflects modern best practices.)

Styling by language

See also

Related sections include Using attributes to declare language, and Choosing language values.

Recommendations
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How to's
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Tests

Styling lists

Go to
How to's

  • Predefined Counter Styles

    Provides cut and paste templates for a large number of international counter styles that can be used for ordered lists and other such counters.

Spec links
Other references

  • Number converter

    Allows you to convert ASCII numbers into other representations that can be used for ordered list counters, headings, etc, using the algorithms described by CSS3 Counter Styles.

  • CSS3 and International Text: Lists

    Preview of upcoming proposals for CSS3 written in 2003.

Tests

Creating vertical text

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Other references

  • Text direction

    Preview of upcoming proposals for CSS3. In W3C article, CSS3 and International Text.

Justifying and aligning text

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Styling ruby text

See also

This section is specifically about styling ruby text. For more information about markup for ruby see Using ruby markup.

Go to
How to's

  • Ruby style

    Introduction to styling ruby with CSS3 Ruby Module. In W3C article, Ruby Markup and Styling.

Spec links
Background reading

  • Ruby

    What is 'ruby'?

  • CJKV Information Processing

    Useful information about ruby in general (Ken Lunde's book, CJKV Information Processing, ISBN 1-56592-224-7, especially chapters 6 and 7)

Other references

Applying various script-specific typographic conventions

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Other references

  • Document grids

    Preview of upcoming proposals for CSS3. In W3C article, CSS3 and International Text.

  • Kumimoji and warichu

    Preview of upcoming proposals for CSS3. In W3C article, CSS3 and International Text.

  • Emphasis

    Preview of upcoming proposals for CSS3. In W3C article, CSS3 and International Text.

Working with date formats

Go to
How to's

  • Date formats

    How do I prepare my web pages to display varying international date formats?

Working with personal names

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  • Personal names around the world

    How do people's names differ around the world, and what are the implications of those differences on the design of forms, databases, ontologies, etc. for the Web?

Contact: Richard Ishida (ishida@w3.org).

Content last changed 2013-10-10 11:23 GMT

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