#248: HTML General Review: HTML Ruby

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Opened Apr 17, 2018

Hello TAGļ¼

This issue is part of the TAG's larger effort to review the HTML spec in its entirety--please see the original issue https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/174 for a summary of all the break-out issues.

The "Sections" are all the sections of the WHATWG HTML spec that should be reviewed as part of this issue. Where the spec section has associated Web Platform Tests, the specific WPT path is noted. While the primary focus of the review is the specification text, it can be helpful to review the related tests to help clarify algorithms or see interoperability conformance issues (or find issues with the tests).

The "Features" are just a sample of what you will encounter as part of this spec section, it's not meant to be exhaustive.

Here are some example suggestions for what to look for during the review, but don't limit to only these suggestions!

  • Look for any APIs that could be 'modernized' according to current design practices.
  • Look for things that could require permissions that aren't modelled in the permissions API at the moment.
  • Look for areas of the platform that contain UA 'magic' (aren't possible for JavaScript programs to emulate due to missing primitives in the platform). These are candidates for future Extensible Web archeology.
  • Look for areas of the spec that describe "wishful thinking" (e.g., that describe a feature that is implemented by no one). Such features should at least have implementor commitments, or they might be candidates for removal from the spec.
  • Look for cryptic and hard-to-follow algorithms that could be improved with extra explanatory text or improved prose. E.g., sometimes adding a "developer note" (green box) can add the needed clarity to understand the intent/purpose or outcome of a complex concept.
  • Look for concepts that are meant to be used together, but where this is not spelled out or explained clearly
Sections WPT path Features
4.5.10 html/semantics/text-level-semantics/the-ruby-element <ruby>, <rt>, <rp>

Please provide feedback as (please select one):

  • open issues in our Github repo for each point of feedback
  • open a single issue in our Github repo for the entire review
  • leave review feedback as a comment in this issue and @-notify [github usernames]

Discussions

Comment by @travisleithead May 15, 2018 (See Github)

This may be of interest for this review: https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/291

Comment by @travisleithead Jun 26, 2018 (See Github)

We had a special request by our friends working on HTML5.3 (see request at https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/275#issuecomment-398408138) to look into the following:

The way ruby allows <rb>A<rb>B<rb>C<rt>a<rt>b<rt>c - but currently we only have one implementation plus an intention to implement. See w3c/html#1424

Comment by @torgo Jul 24, 2018 (See Github)

Discussed at Seattle f2f. Sangwhan to orgnanise some breakouts and discussion to try to bring this together.

Comment by @cynthia Oct 31, 2018 (See Github)

This was brought up during TPAC, and has been communicated to the group. The main issue surrounding this is that tabular ruby has parser level support but no support from layout aside from one implementation. (Firefox) The next course of action would be to make sure this is filed as an issue/PR, for this particular mismatch.

Long term whether or not a layout+data model syntax like this seems to be suboptimal, and we may want to revisit this at some point.