[HN Gopher] Requirements for Japanese Text Layout
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       Requirements for Japanese Text Layout
        
       Author : nxobject
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2024-02-25 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.w3.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.w3.org)
        
       | nxobject wrote:
       | Everything you wanted to know about Japanese typography, and
       | more.
        
         | tkgally wrote:
         | Yes, indeed. I've had a professional interest in Japanese
         | typography for many years, having worked on many Japanese
         | dictionaries and other publications, but this document contains
         | much that I didn't know.
        
       | ngcc_hk wrote:
       | Very interesting. And provide both Japanese and English version
       | (both separately and together) is a God sent.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | Isn't text shapping more in the unicode scope than in w3c scope?
        
         | phonon wrote:
         | This isn't glyph shaping, it's text layout.
        
           | sylware wrote:
           | Which is called text shaping.
           | 
           | ????
        
             | dhosek wrote:
             | text shaping is not a thing. Unicode provides some basic
             | parameterization (e.g., indicating where valid line breaks
             | can occur in a text), but does not provide much more in the
             | way of layout specification, nor should it. It's a text
             | encoding specification, not a typography specification. You
             | will also notice that it does not include, e.g.,
             | specifications about Latin alphabet typographic ligatures
             | either (e.g., f+f+i - ffi). The existence of some ligatures
             | in the Unicode standard is a sop to backwards compatibility
             | with older encodings only (this is also why Unicode
             | includes superscript/subscript digits, box drawing
             | characters and a number of inconsistencies in how different
             | scripts are managed).
        
       | re5i5tor wrote:
       | In season 2 of Tokyo Vice, they show character Jake, a reporter
       | for newspaper Meicho Shimbun, using a native Japanese "word"
       | processor to type in his stories. Really fascinating and seems to
       | be authentic.
        
         | dhosek wrote:
         | I remember being absolutely fascinated by the ability of
         | 1980s/early 1990s Japanese laptops to manage input with a
         | standard keyboard. Especially given the computing resources of
         | the time, it seemed like serious dark magic.
        
       | wahnfrieden wrote:
       | Web has great support for Japanese. Apple native support on iOS
       | and macOS is relatively abysmal, with piss poor support for basic
       | needs like ruby text.
        
         | nxobject wrote:
         | Yeah - my understanding is that, if you really want a cross-
         | platform product, you'll have to license a commercial engine.
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | I like using web views including rendering them to png or pdf
           | 
           | Apple has some janky old UIKit and less-so AppKit support for
           | Japanese that's portable to use from SwiftUI so I get by
           | without needing web views for every label. However it's still
           | nice to just use a web view for primary content.
           | 
           | There's zero input support for advanced Japanese features on
           | native Apple platforms basically, like ruby text editing, but
           | they can be bolted on cleverly with work. Or just use a web
           | view.
        
       | o11c wrote:
       | Hm, I'm having a weird and interesting issue with this website.
       | 
       | I'm using Firefox ESR with the (recommended) Auto Tab Discard [1]
       | extension to save memory for idle background tabs. Unlike prior
       | extensions AFAIU this _should_ be using largely native browser
       | code paths.
       | 
       | When I return to the jlreq page after it has idled out, all the
       | Japanese text comes back and the "English" button is inoperative
       | until I click one of the other language options.
       | 
       | Whose bug is this?
       | 
       | [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-
       | disc...
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-25 23:00 UTC)