"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.
CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents
(such as HTML and XML)
on screen, on paper, etc.
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This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication.
A list of current W3C publications
and the latest revision of this technical report
can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.
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by the CSS Working Group as a Working Draft using the Recommendation
track.
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and may be updated, replaced
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including the spec code "css-ruby" in the title, like this:
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1. Introduction
1.1. What is ruby?
This subsection is not normative.
Ruby is the commonly-used name for a run of text
that appears alongside another run of text (referred to as the "base")
and serves as an annotation or a pronunciation guide associated with that run of text.
In Japanese typography, this case is sometimes called
taigo ruby (Japanese: 対語ルビ, i.e. per-word ruby) or group-ruby,
because the annotation as a whole is associated
with multi-character word (as a whole).
In this second example,
two levels of annotations are attached to the base text:
the hiragana characters on top refer to the pronunciation of each of the base kanji characters,
while the words "Keio" and "University" on the bottom are give the English translation.
Complex ruby with annotation text over and under the base characters
Notice that to reflect the correct association
of hiragana characters and their corresponding Kanji base characters,
the spacing within the base-level text is adjusted.
(This happens around the fourth Kanji character in the figure above,
which has a three-character phonetic gloss.)
To avoid variable spacing of the base text in the example above,
the hiragana annotations can be styled as a merged annotation,
which will look more like the group-ruby example earlier.
However because the base-annotation pairings are recorded in the ruby structure,
if the text breaks across lines, the annotation characters will stay
correctly paired with their respective base characters.
In HTML, ruby structure and markup to represent it is described
in the Ruby Markup Extension specification.
This module describes the CSS rendering model
and formatting controls relevant to ruby layout of such markup.
A more in-depth introduction to Ruby and its formatting
can be found in the "What is Ruby" article [QA-RUBY].
Extensive information about the main ways ruby has traditionally been formatted in Japanese
can be found in JIS X-4051 [JIS4051] (in Japanese)
and in "Ruby and Emphasis Dots" in Requirements for Japanese Text Layout [JLREQ] (in English and Japanese); Rules for Simple Placement of Japanese Ruby [SIMPLE-RUBY] also describes (in English) one possible approach for Japanese ruby formatting. "Interlinear annotations" in Requirements for Chinese Text Layout [CLREQ] describes the related practices for Chinese typography (in Chinese and English).
1.2. Module interactions
This module extends the inline box model of CSS Level 2 [CSS2] to support ruby.
None of the properties in this module apply to the ::first-line or ::first-letter pseudo-elements;
however ruby-position can inherit through ::first-line to affect
ruby annotations on the first line.
1.3. Value Definitions
This specification follows the CSS property definition conventions from [CSS2] using the value definition syntax from [CSS-VALUES-3].
Value types not defined in this specification are defined in CSS Values & Units [CSS-VALUES-3].
Combination with other CSS modules may expand the definitions of these value types.
In addition to the property-specific values listed in their definitions,
all properties defined in this specification
also accept the CSS-wide keywords keywords as their property value.
For readability they have not been repeated explicitly.
1.4. Diagram conventions
This subsection is not normative.
Many typographical conventions in East Asian typography depend
on whether the character rendered is wide (CJK) or narrow (non-CJK).
There are a number of illustrations in this document
for which the following legend is used:
Wide-cell glyph (e.g. Han) that is the nth character in the text run.
They are typically sized to 50% when used as annotations.
Symbolic narrow-cell glyph representation
Narrow-cell glyph (e.g. Roman) which is the nth glyph in the text run.
The orientation which the above symbols assume in the diagrams
corresponds to the orientation that the glyphs they represent
are intended to assume when rendered by the user agent.
Spacing between these characters in the diagrams is incidental,
unless intentionally changed to make a point.
2. Ruby Box Model
The CSS ruby model is based on
the W3C HTML5 Ruby Markup model
and the XHTML Ruby Annotation Recommendation[RUBY].
In this model, a ruby structure consists of
one or more ruby base elements representing the base (annotated) text,
associated with one or more levels of ruby annotation elements representing the annotations.
The structure of ruby is similar to that of a table:
there are "rows" (the base text level, each annotation level)
and "columns" (each ruby base and its corresponding ruby annotations).
Sets of consecutive bases and their consecutive annotations are grouped together into ruby segments.
Within a ruby segment, a ruby annotation may span multiple ruby bases.
Note: In HTML, a single <ruby> element may contain multiple ruby segments.
(In the XHTML Ruby model, a single <ruby> element can only contain one ruby segment.)
For document languages (such as XML applications) that do not have pre-defined ruby elements,
authors must map document language elements to ruby elements;
this is done with the display property.
The following new display values assign ruby layout roles to an arbitrary element:
ruby
Specifies that an element generates a ruby container box.
(Corresponds to HTML/XHTML <ruby> elements.)
ruby-base
Specifies that an element generates a ruby base box.
(Corresponds to HTML/XHTML <rb> elements.)
ruby-text
Specifies that an element generates a ruby annotation box.
(Corresponds to HTML/XHTML <rt> elements.)
ruby-base-container
Specifies that an element generates a ruby base container box.
(Corresponds to XHTML <rbc> elements; generated as an anonymous box in HTML.)
ruby-text-container
Specifies that an element generates a ruby annotation container box.
(Corresponds to HTML/XHTML <rtc> elements.)
Authors using a language (such as HTML)
that supports dedicated ruby markup
should use that markup rather than
styling arbitrary elements (like <span>)
with ruby display values.
Using the correct markup ensures that screen readers
and non-CSS renderers can interpret the ruby structures.
As with the contents of inline boxes,
the containing block for the contents of a ruby container (and all its internal ruby boxes)
is the containing block of the ruby container.
So floats, for example, are trapped by the ruby container’s containing block,
not any of the ruby box types.
2.1.2. Non-Inline Ruby
If an element has an inner display type of ruby and an outer display type other than inline,
then it generates two boxes:
a principal box of the required outer display type type,
and an inline-level ruby container.
All properties specified on the element apply to the principal box
(and if inheritable, inherit to the ruby container box).
This allows styling the element as a block,
while correctly maintaining the internal ruby structure.
Note: Absolute positioning or floating an element causes its display value
to compute to a block-level equivalent. (See [CSS-DISPLAY-3] or [CSS2] section 9.7.)
For the internal ruby display types,
this causes their display value to compute to block.
2.2. Anonymous Ruby Box Generation
The CSS model does not require that the document language
include elements that correspond to each of these components.
Missing parts of the structure are implied through the anonymous box generation rules similar to those used to normalize tables. [CSS2]
However, if an anonymous box so constructed contains only white space,
it is considered intra-ruby white space and is either discarded
or preserved
as described below.
Remove inter-level white space: Any intra-ruby white space whose immediately adjacent in-flow siblings match one of the patterns below
is inter-level white space and is removed, as if it had display: none.
Interpret intra-level white space: Any intra-ruby white space box
whose immediately adjacent in-flow siblings match one of the patterns below
is assigned the box type and subtype defined in the table below:
The goal of this is to simplify the layout model by suppressing any line breaks within ruby annotations.
Alternatively we could try to define some kind of acceptable behavior for them.
Once all ruby layout structures are properly parented,
the UA can start to associate bases with their annotations.
Note: The UA is not required to create any of these anonymous boxes
(or the anonymous empty intra-level white space boxes in § 2.3 Annotation Pairing)
in its internal structures,
as long as pairing and layout behaves as if they existed.
The following markup diagram representing the various boxes
shows where intra-ruby white space is preserved or discarded:
Annotation pairing is the process of associating ruby annotations with ruby bases.
Each ruby annotation is associated with one or more ruby bases,
and is said to span those bases.
(A ruby annotation that spans multiple bases is called
a spanning annotation.)
A ruby base can be associated with
only one ruby annotation per annotation level.
However, if there are multiple annotation levels,
it can be associated with multiple ruby annotations.
A ruby structure is divided into ruby segments,
each consisting of a single ruby base container followed by one or more ruby annotation containers.
Each ruby annotation container in a ruby segment represents one level of annotation for the base text:
the first one represents the first level of annotation,
the second one represents the second level of annotation,
and so on.
The ruby base container represents the base level.
The ruby base container in each segment is thus paired
with each of the ruby annotation containers in that segment.
In order to handle degenerate cases, some empty anonymous containers are assumed:
Otherwise, each ruby annotation is paired,
in document order, with the corresponding ruby base in that segment.
If there are not enough ruby annotations in a ruby annotation container,
the remaining ruby bases are paired with anonymous empty annotations
inserted at the end of the ruby annotation container.
If there are not enough ruby bases,
any remaining ruby annotations pair with empty, anonymous bases
inserted at the end of the ruby base container.
If an implementation supports ruby markup with explicit spanning
(e.g. XHTML Complex Ruby Annotations),
it must adjust the pairing rules to pair spanning annotations to their bases appropriately.
with two ruby bases or annotations that surround corresponding intra-level white space in another level,
then the so-corresponding intra-level white space boxes are also paired.
with two ruby bases or annotations with no intervening intra-level white space,
then the intra-level white space box pairs with
an anonymous empty intra-level white space box assumed to exist between them.
The following diagram shows the pairing of
regular base and annotation boxes
as well as the pairing of intra-ruby white space (represented as ws):
|[ s p a n n i n g a n n o t a t i o n ]||[ a1 ]|[ws]|[ a2 ]|[]|[ a3 ]|[ws]|[ a4 ]||[ b1 ]|[ws]|[ b2 ]|[ws]|[ b3 ]|[]|[ b4 ]|
A ruby annotation whose visibility is collapse is a hidden annotation.
Additionally,
if a ruby annotation has the exact same text content as its base,
it is automatically hidden (auto-hidden)
by the UA.
Hiding a ruby annotation does not affect annotation pairing.
However the hidden annotation is not visible,
and it has no impact on layout
other than to separate adjacent sequences of ruby annotation boxes within its level,
as if they belonged to separate segments
and the hidden annotation’s base were not a ruby base but an intervening inline.
Auto-hiding allows correct inlined display of annotations
for Japanese words that are a mix of kanji and hiragana.
For example, the word 振り仮名 should be inlined as
Hiragana ruby for 振り仮名. Notice there is no hiragana annotation above り, since it is already in hiragana.
The Japanese word in this example is composed of three kanji characters,
one of which is taught in first grade,
while the other two are more advanced.
(Characters colored to show base-pair correspondances.)
昆虫記, with phonetic annotations on all three characters. Because the middle annotation is wider than its base, space has been introduced around the base character to prevent its annotation from colliding with the adjacent annotations.
Fully annotated three-character word
Although some readers might need pronunciation guidance
on all three characters,
for other audiences it is more appropriate
to hide the annotation on the easier character.
Applying visibility: collapse enables this hiding:
昆虫記, with phonetic annotations centered over the first and last characters.
Middle annotation as visibility: collapse
The hiding behavior of visibility: collapse differs from visibility: hidden—which makes the annotation invisible,
but does not remove its impact on layout:
昆虫記, with phonetic annotations on the first and last characters. Over the second one, even though no annotation is showing, space is reserved as if to hold it, which pushes the base characters apart.
Middle annotation as visibility: hidden
It also differs from display: none because visibility: collapse preserves pairing relationships,
whereas display: none removes the box from the tree entirely,
disturbing the pairing of any annotations after it:
昆虫記, with mispaired phonetic annotations: the annotation for the second character having been removed, the annotation for the third character is displayed over the second one.
Middle annotation as display: none
When the computed value of ruby-merge on the annotation container is merge, hiding is disabled.
When that value is auto,
the user agent may decide whether to disable hiding of its annotations,
but it is recommended to enable hiding if the user agent’s layout algorithm
produces the results similar to separate.
The content comparison for auto-hiding takes place prior to white space collapsing (white-space) and text transformation (text-transform)
and ignores elements (considers only the textContent of the boxes).
Note: Future levels of CSS Ruby may add controls for auto-hiding,
but in this level it is always forced.
Note: The white space processing rules
cause a white space sequence containing a segment break (such as a line feed)
to collapse to nothing between Han and Kana characters.
This means that Chinese and Japanese ruby can safely use white space for indentation of ruby markup.
For example, the following markup will display without any spaces:
However, white space that does not contain a segment break does not collapse completely away,
so this markup will display with a space between the first and second ruby pairs:
When a ruby structure is laid out,
its base level is initially laid out on the line
exactly as if its ruby bases were a regular sequence of inline boxes and the ruby container a regular inline box wrapped around it.
When ruby-merge is separate,
each ruby column is sized
to the widest content (ruby base or ruby annotation) in that column.
In the case of spanning annotations (whether actually spanning or pretending to span per ruby-merge: merge),
if the content of a spanning annotation would be wider
than the columns that it spans,
then the difference is distributed equally among the spanned columns.
If a ruby segment contains multiple spanning annotations,
this distribution of additional space
is performed starting with the spanning annotations that span the least number of bases,
and then in increasing number of bases spanned.
Each ruby base and ruby annotation is then sized to exactly span its column(s).
Note: If there are multiple annotations in different levels spanning the same number of bases
that overlap but do not coincide,
the distribution of space is undefined.
Note this is not possible with HTML markup,
but can happen in markup languages with explicit spanning such as in [RUBY].
If any ruby annotation in an annotation container with ruby-merge: auto is wider than its base,
then ruby annotations in that annotation container may extend outside of their column(s).
When they do, their influence on
the measure of the columns they intersect
is up to the user agent,
provided that the ruby segment is made wide enough to fit all its content.
Inter-character annotations are interleaved between columns:
they factor into measurement of annotations that span both adjacent columns,
but are not included in either column
and are never affected by the sizing or positioning
of interlinear annotations.
Within each base and annotation box,
how the extra space is distributed
when its content is narrower than the measure of the box
is specified by its ruby-align property.
The following diagrams illustrate these rules,
covering typical situations
as well as a few more complex ones.
In each case, base boxes and annotation boxes are assumed to have ruby-align: center,
while annotation containers are assumed to have ruby-align: space-between.
|[ a1 ]|[ a2 ]|[annotation-3]||[base 1]|[base 2]|[ base 3 ]|
Boxes within each column are sized to match the widest box of that column.
The value of ruby-align on each base box and annotation box is used
to distribute the extra space in each box.
Spanning (short):
|[ a1 ]|[ short span ]||[base 1]|[base 2]|[base 3]|
When a spanning annotation is shorter than the spanned bases,
there is no extra space to distribute to these bases.
Extra space within the spanning annotation is distributed according to ruby-align on that annotation box,
as for non spanning ones.
Spanning (long):
|[ a1 ]|[spanning annotation]||[base 1]|[ base 2 ]|[ base 3 ]|
When the spanning annotation is longer than the spanned base boxes,
the extra space is distributed equally between them.
|[ a1 ]|[ annotation-2 ]|[ a3 ]||[long annotation spanning all content]||[ base 1 ]|[ base 2 ]|[ base 3 ]|
|[ xx ]|[annotation spanning bases]||[ a1 ]|[ annotation-2 ]|[ a3 ]||[base 1]|[ base 2 ]|[ base 3 ]|
In these two examples with multiple levels,
each column is sized to its longest content,
and spanning annotations that are still longer
than the sum of the columns that they span
grow them further,
adding to each equally.
Several levels, with multiple spanning annotations:
|[ xx ]|[annotation spanning bases]||[ a1 ]|[annotation-2]|[ a3 ]||[lengthy annotation spanning base content]||[base 1]|[ base 2 ]|[base 3]|
When there are multiple spanning annotations,
those that span fewest bases are processed first.
In this case, the green one,
which spans two bases,
is processed before the orange one,
which spans three.
Changing this order would change the distribution of space.
To help identify which spanning annotation is responsible
for which extra spacing,
in this diagram
the color of the text in each spanning annotation is matched
with the background color of spacing it adds to other boxes.
Each interlinearannotation container is sized and positioned
to contain exactly all of its ruby annotations’ margin boxes
as well as the base and annotation containers of any descendant ruby containers also participating in this annotation level’s inline formatting context.
(If an annotation container has no in-flow content,
it is sized and positioned
as if it contained a single empty ruby annotation.)
These annotation containers are then stacked outward
over or under (depending on ruby-position) their corresponding base container,
without any intervening space,
thus determining the block-axis positioning of the ruby annotations with respect to their ruby bases.
Should block-axis margins collapse?
This makes layout more robust,
but is inconsistent with how inlines behave along the inline-axis.
3.2. Inter-character Ruby Layout
Inter-character annotations have special layout. Inter-characterruby annotation boxes are spliced into and measured as part of the layout of the base level.
Each ruby annotation is inserted to the right of the ruby base it is paired with;
a spanninginter-character annotation is placed after
the rightmost of all the bases that it spans. Inter-characterruby annotations are laid out
exactly like inline blocks,
except as described below.
Note: The size and position of inter-characterruby annotation container boxes has no effect on layout.
The above definition is merely so that programmatically inquiring about them
produces deterministic results.
For the purpose of alignment and column sizing (as discussed in § 3 Ruby Layout), inter-characterruby annotations are not considered
to be part of the same column as the base to with they are attached;
rather, they effectively form a column of their own.
The UA is not required to support
any of the background properties or outline properties,
or any other property that illustrates the bounds of the box
on ruby base container boxes or ruby annotation container boxes.
The UA may implement these boxes simply as abstractions for inheritance
and control over the layout of their contents.
3.4. Breaking Across Lines
When there is not enough space for an entire ruby container to fit on the line,
the ruby may be broken wherever all levels simultaneously allow a break.
(See CSS Text 3 § 5 Line Breaking and Word Boundaries for details on line breaking.)
Ruby most often breaks between base-annotation sets,
but if the line-breaking rules allow it, can also break within a ruby base (and, in parallel, its associated ruby annotation boxes).
After line-breaking,
each fragment is laid out independently,
and ruby alignment takes place within each fragment.
3.4.1. Breaking Between Bases
In typical cases, ruby base boxes and ruby annotation boxes are styled to forbid internal line wrapping and do not contain forced breaks.
(See Appendix A.)
In such cases the ruby container can only break between adjacent ruby bases,
and only if no ruby annotations span those ruby bases.
Whether ruby can break between two adjacent ruby bases is controlled by normal line-breaking rules for the base text,
exactly as if the ruby bases were adjacent inline boxes.
(The annotations are ignored when determining soft wrap opportunities for the base level.)
For example, if two adjacent ruby bases are "蝴" and "蝶",
the line may break between them,
because lines are normally allowed to break between two Han characters.
However, if word-break is keep-all, that line break is forbidden.
<ruby>蝴<rt>hú</rt>蝶<rt>dié</rt>
Inter-base white space is significant for evaluating line break opportunities between ruby bases.
As with white space between inlines,
it collapses when the line breaks there,
following the rules detailed in CSS Text 3 § 4.1 The White Space Processing Rules.
Similarly, annotation white space is also trimmed at a line break.
Due to the space, the line may break between "one" and "two".
If the line breaks there, that space—and the space between "1" and "2"—disappears,
in accordance with standard CSS white space processing rules.
3.4.2. Breaking Within Bases
For longer base texts, it is sometimes appropriate to allow breaking within a base-annotation pair.
For example, if an English sentence is annotated with its Japanese translation,
allowing the text to wrap allows for reasonable line breaking behavior in the paragraph.
Insert scanned example so people don’t think this is just the ramblings of an insane spec-writer.
Line-breaking within a ruby base is only allowed if the white-space property
of the ruby base and all its parallel annotations allow it,
and there exists a soft wrap opportunitywithin (i.e. not at the start or end)
the content of each base/annotation box.
Since there is no structural correspondence between fragments of content
within ruby bases and annotations,
the UA may break at any set of opportunities;
but it is recommended that the UA attempt to proportionally balance
the amount of content inside each fragment.
The Unicode bidirectional algorithm reorders logically-stored text for visual presentation
when characters from scripts of opposing directionalities are mixed
within a single paragraph.
To preserve the correspondence of ruby annotations to their respective ruby bases,
a few restrictions must be imposed:
Note: This means that implicit bidi reordering does not work across ruby bases,
so authors will need to ensure that the ruby container’s declared directionality
does indeed match its contents.
Within a segment, ruby bases and ruby annotations that are not merged are ordered within their respective containers
by the direction property of the segment’s ruby base container. Merged annotations are ordered
by the direction property of their annotation container,
exactly as if they were a sequence of inline boxes within their annotation container.
As with other inline-level content,
the bidi reordering of internal ruby boxes happens after line-breaking
so that content is divided across lines according to its logical order.
Note: It could be useful to adjust these rules slightly
so that when ruby-merge is merge on a particular annotation container,
bidi isolation is not forced onto the individual annotations,
enabling them to be processed together.
However, this would add complexity to implementations,
which does not seem justified in the absence of demand to handle this situation.
Anyone with a need for this to be handled
is encouraged to contact the CSS Working Group.
See [CSS3-WRITING-MODES] for a more in-depth discussion of bidirectional text in CSS.
In order to ensure consistent spacing of lines,
documents with ruby typically ensure that the line-height is large enough
to accommodate ruby between lines of text.
Therefore, ordinarily, ruby annotation containers and ruby annotation boxes do not contribute to the measured height of a line’s inline contents;
any alignment (see vertical-align) and line-height calculations
are performed using only the ruby base container,
exactly as if it were a normal inline.
However, if the line-height specified on the ruby container is less than the distance between
the top of the top ruby annotation container and the bottom of the bottom ruby annotation container,
then additional leading is added
on the appropriate side(s) of the ruby base container such that if a block consisted of three lines
each containing ruby identical to this,
none of the ruby containers would overlap.
Note: This does not ensure that the ruby annotations remain within the line box.
It merely ensures that if all lines had equal spacing and equivalent amounts and positioning of ruby annotations,
there would be enough room to avoid overlap.
Authors should ensure appropriate line-height and padding to accommodate ruby,
and be particularly careful at the beginning or end of a block
and when a line contains inline-level content
(such as images, inline blocks, or elements shifted with vertical-align)
taller than the paragraph’s default font size.
Ruby annotations will often overflow the line;
authors should ensure content over/under a ruby-annotated line
is adequately spaced to leave room for the ruby.
Note: More control over how ruby affects alignment and line layout
will be part of the CSS Line Layout Module Level 3.
Note, it is currently in the exploratory stages of development;
descriptions of new features should not yet be relied upon.
This property controls position of the ruby annotation with respect to its base.
Values have the following meanings:
alternate
Different levels of annotations alternate between over and under.
If the annotation container is the first level of annotation in its ruby segment,
or if all prior levels are inter-character,
then alternate, either on its own or in combination with over,
behaves the same as over,
while alternate in combination with under behaves the same as under.
Otherwise,
if the previous level of interlinear annotation is over, alternate behaves like under,
and vice versa.
(In this case, whether alternate is specified alone
or in combination with over or under makes no difference.)
Diagram of ruby glyph layout in horizontal mode with ruby annotation appearing above the base
Ruby over Japanese base text in horizontal layout
Diagram of ruby glyph layout in vertical mode with ruby annotation appearing vertically on the right of the base
Ruby to the right of Japanese base text in vertical layout
under
The ruby annotation appears line-under the base.
This is a relatively rare setting used in ideographic East Asian writing systems,
most easily found in educational text.
Diagram of ruby glyph layout in horizontal mode with ruby annotation appearing below the base
Ruby under Japanese base text in horizontal layout
Otherwise, the ruby annotation becomes an inter-character annotation.
The annotation appears on the right of the base in horizontal text.
This forces the computed value of writing-mode of the ruby annotation children of this ruby annotation container to be vertical-rl.
Note: The computed value of writing-mode on the ruby annotation container itself is not affected.
This is to avoid circular dependencies between computed values
on the writing-mode, display, and ruby-position properties on the same element.
This value is provided for the special case of traditional Chinese
as used especially in Taiwan:
ruby (made of bopomofo glyphs) in that context
appears vertically along the right side of the base glyph,
even when the layout of the base characters is horizontal:
"Bopomofo" ruby in traditional Chinese
(ruby annotation shown in blue for clarity) in horizontal layout
Note: As inheritance works on the element tree without accounting for anonymous boxes created for ruby layout,
when using inter-character annotations authors need to be careful to avoid markup patterns involving
an element-based ruby annotation container,
an anonymous ruby annotation,
and further descendant elements,
as those descendants would inherit their writing mode from the ruby annotation container,
and not from the ruby annotation whose writing-mode has been changed to vertical-rl.
In the above markup, an anonymous ruby annotation box is created as a child of the <rtc> element
to wrap the whole "problematic annotation".
Since it is a child of an annotation container whose ruby-position is inter-character,
its writing-mode will be vertical-rl, which is expected.
However, the <em> element inherits its writing-mode directly from the <rtc> element,
which has not been forced to vertical-rl.
This property controls how ruby annotation boxes should be rendered
when there are more than one in a ruby container box:
whether each pair should be kept separate,
the annotations should be merged and rendered as a group,
or the separation should be determined based on the space available.
The simplest of these is
to render as separate if all ruby annotation boxes fit
within the advances of their corresponding base boxes,
and render as merge otherwise.
This property specifies how text is distributed within the various ruby boxes
when their contents do not exactly fill their respective boxes.
Note that space distributed by ruby-align is unrelated to, and independent of,
any space distributed due to justification.
For inter-character annotations,
this property can also affect the alignment of the box itself
(see § 3.2 Inter-character Ruby Layout).
It otherwise only affects the alignment of content within the box,
not the size or position of the box itself.
Values have the following meanings:
start
The ruby content is aligned with the start edge of its box.
"Katatsuki ruby" (肩付きルビ) is close to,
but not quite the same as,
this start value.
In particular,
its behavior when overhanging its base
can differ from start alignment
depending on surrounding context,
see JLREQ.
Also, it’s only ever used in vertical writing,
and the JLTF considers it not particularly important,
so it may not be worth the effort to make this value smart enough to deal with katatsuki ruby.
If start is needed for some other purpose,
we should keep it.
Otherwise, maybe just drop it?
The ruby content expands as defined for normal text justification
(as defined by text-justify),
except that if there are no justification opportunities the content is centered.
What if a merged annotation causes the ruby segment to be wider?
Does it cause each base to grow as if it were spanning them, as currently specified?
This does not allow e.g. centering the text in a multi-base base container
when its merged annotation is longer.
Instead, maybe we should allow ruby-merge to apply to base containers as well,
but this would require us either to allow a single base to span multiple annotations
(if the base is merged but some annotation levels are not),
or to require that if the base is merged, then all annotation levels must be merged as well.
The way content is aligned when ruby-merge is auto is up to the user agent,
but must be identical to that of ruby-merge: separate when all annotations fit over their respective bases.
4.4. Ruby Text Decoration
Text decoration does not propagate from the base text to the annotations.
When text decoration is specified on an ancestor of the ruby,
it is drawn across the entire content area of the ruby base container,
including any extra space added on either side of the ruby base contents to accommodate long annotations.
When text decoration is specified on a ruby base itself,
this extra space is not decorated,
similar to how a box’s own padding is not decorated when text decoration is specified directly on that box. [CSS3-TEXT-DECOR]
Text decoration may be specified directly on ruby base containers
and ruby annotation containers:
in such cases it is propagated to all of the container’s bases or annotations (respectively),
and is also drawn between them for continuity.
The positions of ruby annotations may be adjusted
to avoid potential conflicts
with overline and underline decorations applied to the base text.
In the basic case of consistent font size and baseline alignment,
an underline or overline is positioned
between the base level and any annotations on that side.
This section needs some clarification about
drawing decorations between the content of adjacent bases/annotations.
Depends on if those boxes are as wide as their column or not.
When ruby annotations are not allowed to overhang,
the ruby container behaves like a traditional inline box,
i.e. only its own contents are rendered within its boundaries
and adjacent elements do not cross the box boundary:
Simple ruby whose text is not allowed to overhang adjacent text
However, if a ruby annotation container is allowed to overhang,
neighbouring content may overlap the ruby container box,
allowing its ruby annotation(s) to partially render over/under
surrounding inline-level content.
Overhang is only allowed to the extent
that it does not cause collisions between
the neighboring content
and the ruby container’s annotation boxes or its overlapped base’s contents.
Typically,
the alignment of the contents of the base or the annotation
is not affected by overhanging behavior:
alignment and space distribution (see ruby-align)
is achieved the same way regardless of the overhang allowance,
and is computed before the space available for overlap is determined.
However, UAs may consider allowed overhang
when determining space distribution and/or alignment of annotations and bases.
I suspect overhanging interacts with alignment in some cases;
might need to look into this later.
The user agent may use [JIS4051] recommendation of
using 0.5ic (half of a full-width character) in the annotation’s font
as the maximum overhang length.
Detailed rules for how ruby text can overhang adjacent characters
for Japanese are described by [JLREQ].
5.2. Line-edge Alignment
When a ruby annotation box that is longer than its ruby base is at the start or end edge of a line,
the user agent may force the side of the ruby annotation that touches the edge of the line
to align to the corresponding edge of the base.
This type of alignment is described by [JLREQ].
This level of the specification does not provide a mechanism to control this behavior.
Unfortunately, because Selectors cannot match against text nodes,
it’s not possible with CSS to express rules that will automatically and correctly
add parentheses to unparenthesized ruby annotations
for all possible ruby markup patterns in HTML.
(This is because HTML ruby allows implying the ruby base from raw text
without a corresponding element.)
However, these rules will add parentheses around each annotation sequence
in cases where either <rb> or <rtc> is used rigorously:
/* Parens around <rtc> */
rtc::before {content:"(";}
rtc::after {content:")";}/* Parens before first <rt> not inside <rtc> */
rb + rt::before,
rtc + rt::before {content:"(";}/* Parens after <rt> not inside <rtc> */
rb ~ rt:last-child::after,
rt + rb::before {content:")";}
rt + rtc::before {content:")(";}
Alternatively, if it is known that a purely alternating style of markup is used
(<ruby>A<rt>a</rt>B<rt>b</rt>C<rt>c</rt><ruby>)
where there are no adjacent ruby annotations,
the following rules will add parentheses around each annotation:
/* Parens around each <rt> */
rt::before {content:"(";}
rt::after {content:")";}
6. Glossary
Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao (Chinese: ㄅㄆㄇㄈ, 注音符號, or 注音符号)
Characters and tone markings developed for use as phonetics in Chinese,
especially standard Mandarin.
These are often, but not exclusively, used for ruby annotations.
Example of Bopomofo used as phonetic inter-character annotations in Chinese
Bopomofo tone marks are spacing characters that occur
(in memory)
at the end of each bopomofo syllable.
They are typically displayed in a separate track
to the right of or above the other bopomofo characters,
and the position of the tone mark depends
on the number of characters in the syllable.
The neutral tone mark, however,
is placed before (and in line with) the bopomofo, not alongside it.
Note: The user agent and font subsystem are responsible for
ensuring the correct relative alignment and positioning of glyphs,
including bopomofo tone marks, when displaying text—whether the text occurs in ruby annotations or as normal inline content.
Such glyph placement is not a function of CSS ruby layout.
Bopomofo letters belong to the BopomofoUnicode script (and are currently mapped in the U+3100–312F and U+31A0–31BF blocks);
the Bopomofo tone marks are
U+02C9 (ˉ), U+02CA (ˊ), U+02C7 (ˇ), U+02CB (ˋ), U+02EA (˪), U+02EB (˫), U+02D9 ( ̇).
Collectively these are all considered Bopomofo characters for the purpose of CSS.
Hanja (Korean: 漢字)
Subset of the Korean writing system that utilizes ideographic
characters borrowed or adapted from the Chinese writing system.
Also see Kanji.
Hiragana (Japanese: 平仮名)
Japanese syllabic script, or character of that script.
Rounded and cursive in appearance.
Subset of the Japanese writing system,
used together with kanji and katakana.
In recent times,
mostly used to write Japanese words
when kanji are not available or appropriate,
and word endings and particles.
Also see Katakana.
Ideograph
A character that is used to represent an idea, word, or word component,
in contrast to a character from an alphabetic or syllabic script.
The most well-known ideographic script is used (with some variation)
in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea,...).
Kana (Japanese: 仮名)
Collective term for hiragana and katakana.
Kanji (Japanese: 漢字)
Japanese term for ideographs; ideographs used in Japanese.
Subset of the Japanese writing system,
used together with hiragana and katakana.
Also see Hanja.
Katakana (Japanese: 片仮名)
Japanese syllabic script, or character of that script.
Angular in appearance.
Subset of the Japanese writing system,
used together with kanji and hiragana.
In recent times, mainly used to write foreign words.
Also see Hiragana.
Acknowledgments
This specification would not have been possible without the help from:
David Baron,
Robin Berjon,
Susanna Bowen,
Stephen Deach,
Martin Dürst,
Hideki Hiura (樋浦 秀樹),
Masayasu Ishikawa (石川雅康),
Taichi Kawabata,
Chris Pratley,
Xidorn Quan,
Takao Suzuki (鈴木 孝雄),
Frank Yung-Fong Tang,
Chris Thrasher,
Masafumi Yabe (家辺勝文),
Boris Zbarsky,
Steve Zilles.
Special thanks goes to the previous editors:
Michel Suignard and Marcin Sawicki of Microsoft,
and Richard Ishida of W3C.
Changes
This section documents the changes since previous publications.
Substantially revamped § 3 Ruby Layout to more clearly define interlinear and inter-character ruby layout
and their interaction with ruby-align. Inter-character ruby is now based on inline block layout,
and its interaction with interlinear ruby
is also now well-defined.
Inline-axis space distribution for interlinear ruby
is now more precisely defined for spanning annotations
(modeled on max-content grid tracks).
Defined handling of nested ruby
by accounting for their base and annotation containers
in the block-axis sizing of interlinear ruby.
(Issue 4986, Issue 4980)
Loosened requirement that ruby overhang not affect the alignment of ruby contents,
added requirement that it not cause ruby content to collide with adjacent content.
Clarify containing block of ruby boxes and contents is, as in the case of other inline boxes, the nearest block container.
Clarify handling of misparented internal table elements.
Trim leading/trailing white space in ruby containers, base base containers, and annotation containers to prevent it from interfering with pairing.
Define layout effect of empty base and annotation containers.
Disable margins, padding, and borders on ruby base containers and ruby annotation containers (but not on ruby bases and ruby annotations).
Changes since the 19 September 2013 WD
Rewrite anonymous box generation rules and white space handling rules,
defined specialized pairing of anonymous white space boxes.
Take nested ruby handling out of pairing.
(Will be handling it via sizing/layout.)
Define bidi layout of ruby structures.
Changes since the 30 June 2011 WD
Remove ruby-span and mentions of rbspan.
Explicit spanning is not used in HTML ruby in favor of implicit spanning.
This can’t handle some pathological double-sided spanning cases,
but there seems to be no requirement for these at the moment.
(For implementations that support full complex XHTML Ruby,
they can imply spanning from the markup the same magic way
that we handle cell spanning from tables.
It doesn’t seem necessary to include controls this in Level 1.)
Defer ruby-overhang and ruby-align: line-end to Level 2.
It’s somewhat complicated, advanced feature.
Proposal is to make this behavior UA-defined and provide some examples of acceptable options.
Close issue requesting display: rp: use display: none.
The Internationalization WG added an issue
requesting a display value for rp elements.
They’re supposed to be hidden when ruby is displayed as ruby.
But this is easily accomplished already with display: none.
Other than inter-character, which we need to keep,
it makes more sense to align ruby positions with text-emphasis-position,
which can correctly handle various combinations of horizontal/vertical preferences.
The auto value relied on inspecting content to determine behavior;
this can be avoided by just using space-around with standard justification rules
(which allow spacing between CJK but not between Latin).
Replaced distribute-letter and distribute-space with space-between and space-around for consistency with distribution keywords in [CSS-FLEXBOX-1] and [CSS-ALIGN-3] and to avoid any links to the definition of text-justify: distribute.
Added ruby-merge property to control jukugo rendering.
This is a stylistic effect, not a structural one;
the previous model assumed that it was structural
and suggested handling it by changing markup. :(
And defined pairing of bases and annotations.
Should now handle all the crazy proposed permutations of HTML ruby markup.
Defined layout of ruby
Defined in detail space distribution, white space handling,
line breaking, line stacking, etc.
Open issue left for bidi.
Conformance
Document conventions
Conformance requirements are expressed with a combination of
descriptive assertions and RFC 2119 terminology. The key words "MUST",
"MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT",
"RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in the normative parts of this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
However, for readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase
letters in this specification.
All of the text of this specification is normative except sections
explicitly marked as non-normative, examples, and notes. [RFC2119]
Examples in this specification are introduced with the words "for example"
or are set apart from the normative text with class="example",
like this:
This is an example of an informative example.
Informative notes begin with the word "Note" and are set apart from the
normative text with class="note", like this:
Note, this is an informative note.
Advisements are normative sections styled to evoke special attention and are
set apart from other normative text with <strong class="advisement">, like
this: UAs MUST provide an accessible alternative.
Conformance classes
Conformance to this specification
is defined for three conformance classes:
A style sheet is conformant to this specification
if all of its statements that use syntax defined in this module are valid
according to the generic CSS grammar and the individual grammars of each
feature defined in this module.
A renderer is conformant to this specification
if, in addition to interpreting the style sheet as defined by the
appropriate specifications, it supports all the features defined
by this specification by parsing them correctly
and rendering the document accordingly. However, the inability of a
UA to correctly render a document due to limitations of the device
does not make the UA non-conformant. (For example, a UA is not
required to render color on a monochrome monitor.)
An authoring tool is conformant to this specification
if it writes style sheets that are syntactically correct according to the
generic CSS grammar and the individual grammars of each feature in
this module, and meet all other conformance requirements of style sheets
as described in this module.
Partial implementations
So that authors can exploit the forward-compatible parsing rules to
assign fallback values, CSS renderers must treat as invalid (and ignore
as appropriate) any at-rules, properties, property values, keywords,
and other syntactic constructs for which they have no usable level of
support. In particular, user agents must not selectively
ignore unsupported component values and honor supported values in a single
multi-value property declaration: if any value is considered invalid
(as unsupported values must be), CSS requires that the entire declaration
be ignored.
Implementations of Unstable and Proprietary Features
Once a specification reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage,
non-experimental implementations are possible, and implementors should
release an unprefixed implementation of any CR-level feature they
can demonstrate to be correctly implemented according to spec.
To establish and maintain the interoperability of CSS across
implementations, the CSS Working Group requests that non-experimental
CSS renderers submit an implementation report (and, if necessary, the
testcases used for that implementation report) to the W3C before
releasing an unprefixed implementation of any CSS features. Testcases
submitted to W3C are subject to review and correction by the CSS
Working Group.
[ alternate || [ over | under ] ] | inter-character
alternate
ruby annotation containers
yes
n/a
discrete
per grammar
specified keyword
Issues Index
The goal of this is to simplify the layout model by suppressing any line breaks within ruby annotations.
Alternatively we could try to define some kind of acceptable behavior for them. ↵
Should block-axis margins collapse?
This makes layout more robust,
but is inconsistent with how inlines behave along the inline-axis. ↵
Insert scanned example so people don’t think this is just the ramblings of an insane spec-writer. ↵
"Katatsuki ruby" (肩付きルビ) is close to,
but not quite the same as,
this start value.
In particular,
its behavior when overhanging its base
can differ from start alignment
depending on surrounding context,
see JLREQ.
Also, it’s only ever used in vertical writing,
and the JLTF considers it not particularly important,
so it may not be worth the effort to make this value smart enough to deal with katatsuki ruby.
If start is needed for some other purpose,
we should keep it.
Otherwise, maybe just drop it? ↵
What if a merged annotation causes the ruby segment to be wider?
Does it cause each base to grow as if it were spanning them, as currently specified?
This does not allow e.g. centering the text in a multi-base base container
when its merged annotation is longer.
Instead, maybe we should allow ruby-merge to apply to base containers as well,
but this would require us either to allow a single base to span multiple annotations
(if the base is merged but some annotation levels are not),
or to require that if the base is merged, then all annotation levels must be merged as well. ↵
This section needs some clarification about
drawing decorations between the content of adjacent bases/annotations.
Depends on if those boxes are as wide as their column or not. ↵
I suspect overhanging interacts with alignment in some cases;
might need to look into this later. ↵