CSS Ruby Layout Level 1 Updated Working Draft

The CSS Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of CSS Ruby Layout Level 1. “Ruby”, a form of interlinear annotation, are short runs of text alongside the base text. They are typically used in East Asian documents to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation. This module describes the rendering model and formatting controls related to displaying ruby annotations in CSS.

Major changes include:

• Adding an alternate keyword as the initial value of ruby-position.
• Renaming ruby-merge: collapse to ruby-merge: merge.
• Defining visibility: collapse to hide annotations explicitly.
• Redrafting key parts of the Ruby Layout section to more precisely define interlinear and inter-character layout and their interaction with ruby-align.
• Adding additional figures and examples throughout.

The full list of changes since the April 2020 draft is available in the Changes section.

There are still a number of known issues open, most of which are about pinning down details in the layout rules. Issues are currently tracked in two places: a disposition of www-style comments and in CSSWG’s GitHub repo.

Please send feedback by either filing an issue in GitHub (preferable) or sending mail to the (archived) public mailing list www-style@w3.org with the spec code ([css-ruby]) and your comment topic in the subject line. (Alternatively, you can email one of the editors and ask them to forward your comment.)