Current Rec phase: Working Draft, recently restored from having been temporarily discontinued as a Note
What and when is your next expected transition: no specific date has been decided, but significant changes are not anticipated before CR, and there exist some implementations, so absent new problematic feedback, we may be in a good shape for moving to and beyond CR before long. Autumn maybe?
What has changed since any previous review? The spec had been discontinued for some years, so any review is at this point ancient. Should be reviewed from scratch.
The spec has numerous examples. In particular, https://www.w3.org/TR/html-ruby-extensions/#ruby-compound is an author-centric non-normative section focused on illustrating both how you're supposed to use the markup patterns the spec defines and enables, and why you'd want to.
Also, The i18n group has produced a variety of articles about ruby and its needs over the years, in line with what this spec is defining. https://www.w3.org/International/articles/ruby/markup.en is particularly relevant, but there are more if desired.
Ruby lies at the intersection of i18n and a11y. The motivations, challenges to be overcome, and solutions offered can be challenging to understand without familiarity with east-asian writing and typographic traditions. If that would be useful, I am happy to join a call to give additional information or answer questions.
Pointer to any explainer for the spec: An accessibility-focused introduction/explainer is included in the self-review: https://github.com/w3c/html-ruby/issues/13.
Beyond that, the spec is intended to contain its own explainer. Specifically:
Also, The i18n group has produced a variety of articles about ruby and its needs over the years, in line with what this spec is defining. https://www.w3.org/International/articles/ruby/markup.en is particularly relevant, but there are more if desired.
Further, this somewhat old but still relevant blog post covers the why and the what of this design quite extensively: https://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2011/ruby/
Other comments:
Ruby lies at the intersection of i18n and a11y. The motivations, challenges to be overcome, and solutions offered can be challenging to understand without familiarity with east-asian writing and typographic traditions. If that would be useful, I am happy to join a call to give additional information or answer questions.