Internationalization Best Practices for Spec Developers

[akuckartz]

Review http://www.w3.org/TR/international-specs/

Checklist:

• [x] Characters
• [x] Language
• [x] Text direction
• [x] Typographic support
• [x] Localizability
• [x] Plain text support
• [x] Case distinctions

[akuckartz]

From section 2.9:

Where searching or sorting is done dynamically, particularly in a multilingual environment, the 'relevant language' SHOULD be determined to be that of the current user, and may thus differ from user to user.

From section 2.10:

Specifications that define a mechanism (for example an API or a defining language) for producing textual data object SHOULD require that the final output of this mechanism be normalized.

From section 2.15:

Since specifications in general need both a definition for their characters and the semantics associated with these characters, specifications SHOULD include a reference to the Unicode Standard, whether or not they include a reference to ISO/IEC 10646

[akuckartz]

From section 3.4:

Language values should be BCP47 language tags.

From section 3.5:

In a multilingual environment it must be possible for the user to receive text in the language they prefer. This may depend on implicit user preferences based on the user's system or browser setup, or on user settings explicitly negotiated with the user.

[akuckartz]

Section 4: Have a look at bidirectional text.