Internationalise The Fediverse


Translation icon. By Linh Nguyen.

We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use […]

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Not Quite Emoji Domain Names


A bright red power symbol.

Like all good geeks, I have far too many domain names that I acquired for interesting projects which never took off. My latest is a bit different though. https://⏻.ga/ That's "Unicode Power Symbol Dot Gabon". Because why not. Regular readers will know that I helped get ⏻ and several power symbols into Unicode. When I […]

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Simultaneous Translation in HTML


The HTML5 Logo.

How do you show two languages simultaneously in HTML? If you want to show text in a foreign language, the markup is simple: <html lang="en-GB"> ... As Caesar said: <i lang="la">veni vidi vici</i> That says the page is in British English (en-GB) but the specific phrase is in Latin (la). But how can you offer […]

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HTML Ruby and Bidirectional Text


The HTML5 Logo.

The set of HTML <ruby> elements allow us to add pronunciation above text. For example: "When you visit the zoo, be sure to see the panda - 熊(Xióng)猫(māo)." This is written as: &lt;ruby&gt;熊&lt;rp&gt;(&lt;/rp&gt;&lt;rt&gt;Xióng&lt;/rt&gt;&lt;rp&gt;)&lt;/rp&gt;&lt;/ruby&gt;&lt;ruby&gt;猫&lt;rp&gt;(&lt;/rp&gt;&lt;rt&gt;māo&lt;/rt&gt;&lt;rp&gt;)&lt;/rp&gt;&lt;/ruby&gt;. That is, the word or character which needs text above it is wrapped in <ruby>. The pronunciation is wrapped in <rt>. The […]

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If HTML5 Were British


The HTML5 Logo.

If you've been around programming circles long enough, you'll probably have read the seminal "If PHP Were British". If not, go read it now. I'll wait. I love the idea of a non-American programming language. I'm aware that there are some, but I'm unaware of any which are in British English. Except, perhaps, BBC Basic. […]

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Localisation is too hard for Gmail


Google email interface.

/ləʊk(ə)lʌɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/ The ability to adjust a user-interface to the user's local language or dialect Because I live in the UK, I speak en_GB (English, Great Britain) rather than en_US (English, Simplified United States). Mostly, all dialects of English are mutually intelligible. Sure, the Brits love the letter U and the Americans stick a Z in […]

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<input type="country" />


A screenshot of a list of country flags

Recently, Lea Verou asked an important question about whether HTML should have a standardised way of letting users select a country from a list. Lea Verou@LeaVerouHTML Idea: <input type="country"> which would become a searchable dropdown with all countries and their flags.Wouldn't that be awesome?❤️ 1,863💬 113🔁 013:17 - Sat 21 October 2017 You can read […]

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Why can't you send email to a Chinese address?


We all know what an email address looks like and how to validate them, right? A few years ago I got the Chinese domain name 莎士比亚.org. You can browse to it, link to it, and send email to it. Or can you? When I tried two years ago, none of the major email providers supported […]

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