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 English letters at all!!! A decade ago, I was miffed that GitHub only supported some ASCII characters in its project names. There's no technical reason why your repo can't …
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@font-face { font-family: "power"; src:…
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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 an in-text translation of that phrase into the page's native language? Here are a few options - and their drawbacks. Title Text <i…
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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: <ruby>熊<rp>(</rp><rt>Xióng</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby><ruby>猫<rp>(</rp><rt>māo</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby>. That is, the word or character which needs text above it is wrapped in <ruby>. The pronunciation is wrapped in <rt>. The <rp> e…
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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. Although that also allows traitorous American spelling for some keywords. HTML was invented by a Brit (Hi Sir Timbl!). So why doesn't it use British spelling for everything? …
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/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 every possible word. But we get along reasonably well. Except in Gmail. Here's my en_GB localised Gmail interface. Note how there is a folder calle…
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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 through the conversation and make your own mind up (while also marvelling at the witless mansplainers) - but I'd like to give you my considere…
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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 sending to non-ASCII email addresses. Today, I tried again with six of the big "Western" webmail providers. How did they do? Show Me The Data! I tested by trying to send an email to test@莎士比亚.org and the Punycode repre…
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