On Tuesday, July 8, 2014 3:34:50 AM UTC+10, ian.h...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 1, 2014 12:58:45 PM UTC-7, Koji Ishii wrote:
> > Summary:
> >
> > Two recent HTML changes improve ruby support:
> >
> > 1) Addition of the rb and rtc elements (but not rbc); and
> >
> > 2) Matching update to the tag omission rules to make ruby authoring easier.
> >
> > By implementing these changes, Gecko supports the parsing side of all the
> > ruby use cases required for the internationalization of HTML (see use cases
> > document below for details). It also enables the implementation of the CSS
> > Ruby Layout. The Japanese education market strongly requires this and a
> > Mozilla developer has already started working on it.
>
> Could you elaborate on why we are using the more complicated W3C rules here
> instead of the simpler WHATWG rules, given that the WHATWG rules also address
> the same use cases?
IMO, the main reason is that, the W3C rules provide more flexibility for
authors to make the document more semantic and stylable.
Please note that, the inline form is not limited to providing compatibility.
You can see an example in JLREQ Fig. 3.9. It is a use case includes inline
kana. If you want the word "明朝体" to be marked in ruby in separate form, with
the WHATWG rules, you must write it as:
<ruby>明<rt>みん</rt>朝<rt>ちょう</rt>体<rt>たい</rt></ruby>
It is incompatible with the inline form, which means, if an author wants to
switch between the inline form and ruby, there are only two options: 1. provide
a different document for each form; 2. drop the separate form and use only the
collapsed form for ruby. Neither of them perfectly matches the requirement. But
with the W3C rules, it can be written as:
<ruby><rb>明<rb>朝<rb>体<rp>（<rt>みん<rt>ちょう<rt>たい<rp>）</ruby>
which is obviously compatible with the inline form.
The difference in expression ability becomes more important when there are
words mixed with kanji and kana, such as "振り仮名". For this word, you won't even
have the second option above, because I don't think people want to write
something like
<ruby>振り仮名<rt>ふりがな</rt></ruby>
In conclusion, I think the WHATWG rules are not flexible enough for multi-pair
rubies, which limits both the semantization and the stylability of documents.
In other words, I don't think the two rule sets address the same use cases,
especially in perspective of semantics. The W3C rules are much more powerful,
though also more complicated, than the WHATWG rules.
- Xidorn
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