We are please to announce that Paige Williams, Director of Global Readiness, Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, will deliver the keynote at the 8th Multilingual Web Workshop, “Data, content and services for the Multilingual Web,” in Riga, Latvia (29 April 2015).

Paige spent 10 years managing internationalization of Microsoft.com, before joining the Trustworthy Computing organization in 2005. In TwC, Paige oversees compliance of company policy for geographic, country-region and cultural requirements, establishing a new center of excellence for market and world readiness, globalization/localizability, and language programs, tools, resources and external community forums to reach markets across the world with the right local experience.

The Multilingual Web Workshop series brings together participants interested in the best practices, new technologies, and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others address the new opportunities and challenges of the multilingual Web. It will provide for networking across communities and building connections.

Registration for the Workshop is free, and early registration is recommended since space at the Workshop is limited.

The workshop will be part of the Riga Summit 2015 on the Multilingual Digital Single Market. We are organizing the workshop as part of the Riga Summit to strengthen the European related community at large. Depending on the number of submissions to the MultilingualWeb workshop we also may suggest to move presentations to other days of the summit. For these reasons we highly recommend you to attend the whole Riga Summit!

There is still opportunity for individuals to submit proposals to speak at the workshop. Ideal proposals will highlight emerging challenges or novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience. The deadline for speaker proposals is March 8, but early submission is strongly encouraged. See the Call for Participation for more details.

This workshop is made possible by the generous support of the LIDER project.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Candidate Recommendation of CSS Counter Styles Level 3. It adds new built-in counter styles to those defined in CSS 2.1, but, more importantly, it also allows authors to define custom styles for list markers, numbered headings and other types of generated content.

At the same time, the Internationalization Working Group has updated their Working Draft of Predefined Counter Styles, which provides custom rules for over a hundred counter styles in use around the world. It serves both as a ready-to-use set of styles to copy into your own style sheets, and also as a set of worked examples.

Att välja & att använda en teckenkodning (Choosing & applying a character encoding)

Att deklarera teckenkodning i CSS (Declaring character encodings in CSS)

Att deklarera teckenkodning i HTML (Declaring character encodings in HTML)

These articles were translated into Swedish thanks to Olle Olsson, SICS.

The Unicode 7.0 core specification is now available in paperback book form.

Responding to requests, the editorial committee has created a pair of modestly-priced print-on-demand volumes that contain the complete text of the core specification of Version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard.

The form-factor in this edition has been changed from US letter to 6×9 inch US trade paperback size, making the two volumes more compact than previous versions. The two volumes may be purchased separately or together. The cost for the pair is US$16.27, plus postage and applicable taxes. Please visit http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/unicode to order.

Note that these volumes do not include the Version 7.0 code charts, nor do they include the Version 7.0 Standard Annexes and Unicode Character Database, all of which are available only on the Unicode website.

The 1st Summer Datathon on Linguistic Linked Open Data (SD-LLOD-15) will be held from June 15th to 19th 2015 at Residencia Lucas Olazábal of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Cercedilla, Madrid.

The SD-LLOD datathon will provide practical knowledge about Linguistic Linked Data. The event targets both industry and academia. Participants will learn how to migrate linguistic data and publish them as Linked Data on the Web. The datathon is organized by the LIDER project and will include practical sessions, seminars on selected topics and hacking sessions. To register, participants are expected to submit a short description (no more than 500 words) of their work and the resources they plan to work with during the datathon.

The cost of the datathon is sponsored by the LIDER project, which includes accommodation and meals of participants. There will be an administrative fee of 50€ for registering in the datathon. A limited amount of travelling grants will be available for attendants from less-developed countries who cannot cover their trip with other funds. Registration will be closed on 15th March.

W3C announced today the 8th MultilingualWeb workshop in a series of events exploring the mechanisms and processes needed to ensure that the World Wide Web lives up to its potential around the world and across barriers of language and culture.

This workshop will be held 29 April 2015 in Riga, Latvia, and is made possible by the generous support of the LIDER project. The workshop is part of the Riga Summit 2015 on the Multilingual Digital Single Market (27-29 April)

Anyone may attend all sessions at no charge and the W3C welcomes participation by both speakers and non-speaking attendees. Early registration is encouraged due to limited space.

Building on the success of seven highly regarded previous workshops, this workshop will emphasize new technology developments that lead to new opportunities for the Multilingual Web. The workshop brings together participants interested in the best practices and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web. It provides further opportunities for networking across communities. We are particularly interested in speakers who can demonstrate novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience.

See the Call for Participation and register online.

The W3C Internationalization Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Indic Layout Requirements on behalf of the Indic Layout Task Force, part of the W3C Internationalization Interest Group.

This document describes the basic requirements for Indic script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and SVG about how to support users of Indic scripts. The current document focuses on Devanagari, but there are plans to widen the scope to encompass additional Indian scripts as time goes on.

Publication as a First Public Working Draft, signals the beginning of the process, rather than an end point. We are now looking for comments on the document. Please send any comments you have to public-i18n-indic@w3.org. The archive is public, but you need to subscribe to post to it.

修改 HTML 页面编码为 UTF-8 (Changing an HTML page encoding to UTF-8)

为什么使用语言属性？ (Why use the language attribute?)

These articles were translated into Simplified Chinese thanks to Sam Chen.

Verwendung von Auswahllisten (select) für sprachspezifische und regionalspezifische Inhalte (Using select to link to localized content)

Visuelle vs. logische Buchstaben­reihenfolge (Visual vs. logical ordering of text)

Angabe der Sprache in HTML (Declaring language in HTML)

Verwendung des translate-Attributs in HTML (Using HTML’s translate attribute)

These articles were translated into German thanks to Gunnar Bittersmann.

The final report for the Workshop on Chinese Language Text Layout Requirements, which was held on September 11, 2014, at Beihang University, is now available. See also the Chinese version of this report.

The report contains links to slides.

The workshop gave a strong message of support for W3C Beihang and CESI to cooperate and lead the work on the Chinese Layout Requirement Document. In addition to Simplified and Traditional Chinese, there was also strong interest from representatives of the Mongolian, Tibetan and Uighur script communities to participate in the work. The closing session of the workshop proposed a number of steps to continue the efforts.

The W3C staff is driving the process of setting up this task force and reaching out to a wide range of interested stakeholders. This consultation will seek to clarify the mission for the task force, the target topics and industry priorities, and opportunities for liaisons with other related standards development organizations.