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This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (UCAS) script. The target audience includes developers of Web standards and technologies, such as HTML, CSS, Mobile Web, Digital Publications, and Unicode, as well as implementers of web browsers, ebook readers, and other applications that need to render Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics text.
This document points to resources for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (UCAS) script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications about how to support languages written using the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository Americas Language Enablement (amlreq), with contributors from the W3C Internationalization Interest Group. It is published by the Internationalization Working Group. The end target for this document is a Working Group Note.
To make it easier to track comments, please raise separate issues or emails for each comment, and point to the section you are commenting on using a URL.
Some links on this page point to repositories or pages to which information will be added over time. Initially, the link may produce no results, but as issues, tests, etc. are created they will show up.
Links that have a gray color led to no content the last time this document was updated. They are still live, however, since relevant content could be added at any time. When the document is updated, links that now point to results will have their live colour restored.
Introduction
Contributors
This document was created by Richard Ishida.
See also the GitHub contributors list for the Americas Language Enablement project, and the discussions related to the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script.
About this document
This document points to resources for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (UCAS) script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These resources provide information for developers of Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support languages written using the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script and how it works see Eastern Canadian Inuktitut Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as: Phonology, Vowels, Syllables, and Numbers.
Gap analysis
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script, and prioritises and describes the impact of those gaps on the user.
Gap reports are brought to the attention of spec and browser implementers, and are tracked via the Gap Analysis Pipeline. (Filter for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script items)
Related resources
The document Language enablement index points to this document and others, and provides a central location for developers and implementers to find information related to various scripts.
The W3C also has a repository with discussion threads related to the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script, including requests from developers to the user community for information about how scripts/languages work, and a notification system that tracks issues in W3C working groups related to the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script. See a list of unresolved questions for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Script Overview
The Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics script is an featural syllabary, where the majority of symbols represent both a consonant and a vowel, but vowel components are indicated by standardised rotations of the glyph shape.
The Inuit languages can be written using the syllabic script, or using a Latin transcription. The former is widely used in eastern dialects, whereas the latter is more common in the west.
Plains Cree is only one dialect (albeit with the largest number of speakers) in a continnuum running east and west, where each dialect has small differences in pronunciation and also small differences in orthography. In particular, eastern dialects tend to put the labialisation dot on the left, rather than on the right of the base character, and the small superscript coda symbols tend to resemble the larger syllables, whereas in Plains Cree the shape is very different.
The UCAS script runs left to right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces. There is no case distinction.
In the UCAS featural syllabary a majority of symbols in the syllabary represesent a CV pairing, but the symbol is rotated to indicate what the vowel is.
Standalone vowels are represented by syllablic letters.
Syllable-final consonants (ie. not followed by a vowel), are typically represented by a set of superscript symbols, however Cree also uses a small number of non-syllabic characters for particular sounds.
A small dot above a symbol indicates a lengthened vowel, but there are precomposed code points for all combinations of base plus diacritics. These are all atomic characters. Inuktitut uses no combining marks.
Numbers are written using ASCII digits.
All topics
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
Text direction
Writing mode
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Bidirectional text
Not applicable.
Glyph shaping & positioning
Fonts & font styles
- Requirements
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Context-based shaping & positioning
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Cursive text
Not applicable.
Letterform slopes, weights, & italics
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Case & other character transforms
Not applicable.
Typographic units
Characters & encoding
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes, Vowels: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- Orthography Notes, Consonants: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- Character usage: Canadian Syllabics
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
-
- W3C type samples
- r12a type samples: consonants • vowels
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Grapheme/word segmentation & selection
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes, Word boundaries: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- Orthography Notes, Graphemes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tools
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Punctuation & inline features
Phrase & section boundaries
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
-
- W3C type samples
- r12a type samples: phrases • bracketing
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Quotations & citations
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Emphasis & highlighting
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Inline notes & annotations
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Text decoration & other inline features
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Data formats & numbers
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Line & paragraph layout
Line breaking & hyphenation
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- Approaches to line-breaking
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Text alignment & justification
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut
- Approaches to full justification
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Text spacing
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Baselines, line height, etc.
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut • Plains Cree
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Lists, counters, etc.
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Styling initials
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
-
Page & book layout
General page layout & progression
tbd
Grids & tables
tbd
Footnotes, endnotes, etc
tbd
Page headers, footers, etc
tbd
Forms & user interaction
tbd