Title: CSS Ruby Layout Module Level 1 Shortname: css-ruby Level: 1 Status: ED Work Status: Exploring Group: csswg ED: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ruby-1/ TR: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ruby-1/ Previous Version: https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-css-ruby-1-20140805/ Previous Version: https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-css3-ruby-20130919/ Editor: Elika J. Etemad / fantasai, Invited Expert, http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/contact, w3cid 35400 Editor: Koji Ishii, Google, kojiishi@gmail.com, w3cid 45369 Editor: Xidorn Quan, Mozilla https://www.mozilla.org/, https://www.upsuper.org/, w3cid 73936 Abstract: “Ruby”, a form of interlinear annotation, are short runs of text alongside the base text. Abstract: They are typically used in East Asian documents to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation. Abstract: This module describes the rendering model and formatting controls related to displaying ruby annotations in CSS. Ignored terms: internal table elements Ignored vars: any
This section is not normative.
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.
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:
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.
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.
The following figures show two examples of Ruby, a simple case and one with more complicated structure.
In this first example, a single annotation is used to annotate the base text.
Example of ruby used in Japanese (simple case)
In Japanese typography, this case is sometimes called taigo ruby or group-ruby (per-word 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 a base sequence: 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 annotations describing the English translation.
Complex ruby with annotation text over and under the base characters
Notice that to allow correct association between the hiragana characters and their corresponding Kanji base characters, the spacing between these Kanji characters is adjusted. (This happens around the fourth Kanji character in the figure above.) To avoid variable spacing between the Kanji characters in the example above the hiragana annotations can be styled as a collapsed 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.
Ruby formatting as used in Japanese is described in JIS X-4051 [[JIS4051]] (in Japanese) and in Requirements for Japanese Text Layout [[JLREQ]] (in English and Japanese)]. 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.
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).
Consecutive bases and annotations are grouped together into ruby segments. Within a ruby segment, a ruby annotation may span multiple ruby bases.
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.
Name: display New values: ruby | ruby-base | ruby-text | ruby-base-container | ruby-text-container
The following new 'display' values assign ruby layout roles to an arbitrary element:
<ruby> elements.)
<rb> elements.)
<rt> elements.)
<rbc> elements; generated as an anonymous box in HTML.)
<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.
Ruby containers are non-atomic inline-level boxes. Like inline boxes, they break across lines, and their containing block is the nearest block container ancestor. And just as the contents of an inline box participate in the same inline formatting context that contains the inline box itself, a ruby container and its base-level contents participate in the same inline formatting context that contains the ruby container itself.
However ruby containers also establish a ruby formatting context that builds further structure around their segment of the inline formatting context. Ruby bases, ruby annotations, ruby base containers, and ruby annotation containers are internal ruby boxes: like internal table elements, they have specific roles in ruby layout, and participate in their ruby container’s ruby formatting context.
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.
Are internal ruby boxes inline-level?
If an element has an inner display type of ''ruby'' and an outer display type other than ''display/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 that 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 ''display/block''.
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]]
| Previous box | Next box |
|---|---|
| any | ruby annotation container |
| not ruby annotation | ruby annotation |
| Previous box | Next box | Box type | Subtype |
|---|---|---|---|
| ruby base | ruby base | ruby base | inter-base white space |
| ruby annotation | ruby annotation | ruby annotation | inter-annotation white space |
| ruby annotation or ruby annotation container | ruby base or ruby base container | ruby base | inter-segment white space |
| ruby base or ruby base container | ruby base container | ||
| ruby base container | ruby base or ruby base container |
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.
Make this diagram into an example.
Once all ruby layout structures are properly parented, the UA can start to associate bases with their annotations.
Note that the UA is not required to create any of these anonymous boxes (or the anonymous empty intra-level white space boxes in the pairing section) in its internal structures, as long as pairing and layout behaves as if they existed.
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 is 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. Once pairing is complete, ruby “column” units are defined, each represented by a single ruby base and one ruby annotation (possibly an empty, anonymous one) from each annotation level in its ruby segment.
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:
Inter-segment white space is effectively a ruby segment of its own.
Within a ruby segment, each ruby base in the ruby base container is paired with one ruby annotation from each ruby annotation container in its ruby segment.
If a ruby annotation container contains only a single, anonymous ruby annotation, then that ruby annotation is paired with (i.e. spans across) all of the ruby bases in its ruby segment.
Otherwise, each ruby annotation is paired, in 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.
Intra-level white space does not participate in standard annotation pairing. However, if the immediately-adjacent ruby bases or ruby annotations are paired
Insert diagram
When ruby containers are nested, pairing begins with the deepest ruby container, then expands out. From the pairing perspective of the outer ruby container, each ruby container nested within another ruby container counts as representing a single ruby base/annotation per level. The outer ruby container’s ruby annotations paired to the nested ruby are therefore paired with (and span) all of the nested ruby container’s ruby bases. Each ruby annotation container in the nested ruby container occupies the same annotation level in the outer ruby container as it does in the inner one and participates in its layout as if it were directly contained in the outer ruby container.
This process is recursive. Thus, using nested ruby containers allows the representation of complex spanning relationships.
It's not clear whether this falls out of layout handling of ruby containers inside ruby bases or needs to be handled specially. Waiting until layout is better-defined to find out...
If a ruby annotation has the exact same text content as its base, it is hidden. Hiding a ruby annotation does not affect annotation pairing or the block-axis positioning of boxes in other levels. 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.
This is to allow 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
振り仮名(ふりがな)
and therefore marked up as
<ruby> <rb>振</rb><rb>り</rb><rb>仮</rb><rb>名</rb> <rp>(</rp><rt>ふ</rt><rt>り</rt><rt>が</rt><rt>な</rt><rp>)</rp> </ruby>
However, when displayed as ruby, the “り” should be hidden
Hiragana ruby for 振り仮名. Notice there is no hiragana annotation above り, since it is already in hiragana.
When the computed value of 'ruby-merge' is ''collapse'', the autohiding is disabled. When the computed value of 'ruby-merge' is ''auto'', the user agent may decide whether to autohide or not, but it is recommended to autohide if the algorithm the user agent chose produces the results similar to ''separate'' would produce.
The content comparison for this auto-hiding behavior
takes place prior to white space collapsing ('white-space') and text transformation ('text-transform')
and ignores elements (considers only the textContent of the boxes).
Future levels of CSS Ruby may add controls for auto-hiding, but in this level it is always forced.
White space within a ruby structure is discarded
<ruby> <rb>東</rb><rb>京</rb> <rt>とう</rt><rt>きょう</rt> <rt>Tō</rt><rt>kyō</rt> </ruby>
Between ruby segments, between ruby bases, and between ruby annotations, however, white space is not discarded, and is maintained for rendering as inter-base, inter-annotation, or inter-segment white space. (See Anonymous Ruby Box Generation, above.)
The rules preserving white space allow ruby to be used with space-separated scripts such as Latin. For example,
<ruby> <rb>W</rb><rb>W</rb><rb>W</rb> <rt>World</rt> <rt>Wide</rt> <rt>Web</rt> </ruby>
They also ensure that annotated white space is preserved. For example,
<ruby> <rb>Aerith</rb><rb> </rb><rb>Gainsboro</rb> <rt>エアリス</rt><rt>・</rt><rt>ゲインズブール</rt> </ruby>
Where undiscarded white space is collapsible, it will collapse following the standard white space processing rules. [[!CSS3TEXT]] For collapsible white space between ruby segments (inter-segment white space), however, the contextual text for determining collapsing behavior is given by the ruby bases on either side, not the text on either side of the white space in source document order.
Note that 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:
<ruby> 屋<rt>おく</rt>内<rt>ない</rt> 禁<rt>きん</rt>煙<rt>えん</rt> </ruby>
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:
<ruby> 屋<rt>おく</rt> 内<rt>ない</rt> 禁<rt>きん</rt> 煙<rt>えん</rt> </ruby>
When a ruby structure is laid out, its base level is laid out on the line, aligned according to its 'vertical-align' property exactly as if its ruby bases were a regular sequence of inline boxes. Each ruby base container is sized and positioned to contain exactly all of its ruby bases’ margin boxes.
Ruby annotations associated with the base level are then positioned with respect to their ruby base boxes according to the applicable 'ruby-position' values. Ruby annotations within a level (within a single ruby container) are aligned to each other as if they were inline boxes participating in the same inline formatting context. Each ruby annotation container is sized and positioned to contain exactly all of its ruby annotations’ margin boxes.
Ruby annotation containers are stacked outward over or under their corresponding ruby base container, without any intervening space.
Should block-axis margins collapse? This makes layout more robust, but is inconsistent with how inlines behave along the inline-axis.
A ruby container (or fragment thereof) measures as wide as the content of its widest level. Similarly, ruby base boxes and ruby annotation boxes within a ruby “column” have the measure of the widest content in that “column”. In the case of spanning annotations (whether actually spanning or pretending to span per 'ruby-merge'), the measures of the ruby annotation box and the sum of its associated ruby base boxes must match.
How the extra space is distributed when ruby content is narrower than the measure of its box is specified by the 'ruby-align' property.
Should the ruby bases and annotations size to the column, or size to the content?
Inter-character annotations have special layout. When 'ruby-position' indicates ''inter-character'' annotations, the affected ruby annotation boxes are spliced into and measured as part of the layout of the base level. The ruby base container must be sized to include both the ruby base boxes as well as the ''inter-character'' ruby annotation boxes. The affected ruby annotation container is similarly sized so that its content box coincides with that of the ruby base container.
For the purpose of laying out other levels of annotations, an ''inter-character'' annotation effectively becomes part of its base. Or should it become a quasi-base between two bases? A spanning ''inter-character'' annotation is placed after all the bases that it spans.
In most respects, ruby boxes can be styled similar to inline boxes. However, the UA is not required to support any of the box properties (borders, margins, padding), any of the background properties or outline properties, or any other property that illustrates the bounds of the box on ruby base container boxes, ruby annotation container boxes, or ruby-internal ruby container boxes. The UA may implement these boxes simply as abstractions for inheritance and control over the layout of their contents.
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. 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).
Whenever ruby breaks across lines, ruby annotations must stay with their respective ruby bases. The line must not break between a ruby base and its annotations, even in the case of ''inter-character'' annotations.
''inter-character'' ruby line breaking opportunity
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.
Ruby line breaking opportunity
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. Similarly, annotation white space is also trimmed at a line break.
For example, given the following markup:
<ruby><rb>one</rb> <rb>two</rb> <rt>1</rt> <rt>2</rt></ruby>
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. [[CSS3TEXT]]
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 opportunity within (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.
There are no line breaking opportunities within ''inter-character'' annotations.
Ruby alignment takes place within each fragment, after line-breaking.
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 correspondance of ruby annotations to their respective ruby bases, a few restrictions must be imposed:
To this end,
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.
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.
See [[CSS3-WRITING-MODES]] for a more in-depth discussion of bidirectional text in CSS.
The 'line-height' property controls spacing between lines in CSS. When inline content on line is shorter than the 'line-height', half-leading is added on either side of the content, as specified in CSS2.1§10.8. [[!CSS2]]
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 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 that 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.
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 process of being rewritten; the current drafts should not be relied upon.
The following properties are introduced to control ruby positioning, text distribution, and alignment.
Name: ruby-position Value: over | under | inter-character Initial: over Applies to: ruby annotation containers Inherited: yes Computed value: specified keyword Animation type: discrete
This property controls position of the ruby text with respect to its base. Values have the following meanings:
Issue-107: Roland Steiner has requested the addition of an auto value as default. See this thread and this one. Current proposal is to add an optional ''alternate?'' keyword.
Ruby over Japanese base text in horizontal layout
Ruby to the right of Japanese base text in vertical layout
Ruby under Japanese base text in horizontal layout
Ruby to the left of Japanese base text in vertical layout
The ruby text appears on the right of the base in horizontal text. This value forces the computed value of 'writing-mode' of the ruby annotation container to be ''vertical-rl''.
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 text shown in blue for clarity) in horizontal layout
If multiple ruby annotation containers have the same 'ruby-position', they stack along the block axis, with lower levels of annotation closer to the base text.
Name: ruby-merge Value: separate | collapse | auto Initial: separate Applies to: ruby annotation containers Inherited: yes Computed value: specified keyword Animation type: by computed value type
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 collapsed and rendered as a group, or the separation should be determined based on the space available.
Possible values:
Each ruby annotation box is rendered in the same column(s) as its corresponding base box(es). This style is called “mono ruby” in [[JLREQ]].
For example, the following two markups render the same:
<ruby>無<rt>む</ruby><ruby>常<rt>じょう</ruby>
and:
<ruby style="ruby-merge:separate"><rb>無<rb>常<rt>む<rt>じょう</ruby>
All ruby annotation boxes within the same ruby segment on the same line are concatenated, and laid out as if their contents belonged to a single ruby annotation box spanning all their associated ruby base boxes. This style renders similar to “group ruby” in [[JLREQ]], except that ruby annotations are kept together with their respective ruby bases when breaking lines.
The following two markups render the same both characters fit on one line:
<ruby>無常<rt>むじょう</ruby>
and:
<ruby style="ruby-merge:collapse"><rb>無<rb>常<rt>む<rt>じょう</ruby>
However, the second one renders the same as ''ruby-position: separate'' when the two bases are split across lines.
The user agent may use any algorithm to determine how each ruby annotation box is rendered to its corresponding base box, with the intention that if all annotations fit over their respective bases, the result is identical to “mono ruby”, but if some annotations are wider than their bases the space is shared in some way to avoid imposing space between bases.
One possible algorithm is described as “jukugo ruby” in [[JLREQ]].
Another, more simplified algorithm of “jukugo ruby” is to render as ''separate'' if all ruby annotation boxes fit within the advances of their corresponding base boxes, and render as ''collapse'' otherwise.
Name: ruby-align Value: start | center | space-between | space-around Initial: space-around Applies to: ruby bases, ruby annotations, ruby base containers, ruby annotation containers Inherited: yes Computed value: specified keyword Animation type: by computed value type
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.
Values have the following meanings:
''ruby-align/start'' ruby distribution
''ruby-align/center'' ruby distribution
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.
''ruby-align/space-between'' ruby distribution
As for ''ruby-align/space-between'' except that there exists an extra justification opportunities whose space is distributed half before and half after the ruby content.
Since a typical implementation will by default define justification opportunities between every adjacent pair of CJK characters and not between adjacent pairs of Latin characters, this should result in the behavior recommended by [[JLREQ]]: for wide-cell ruby content to be distributed...
Wide-cell text in ''ruby-align/space-around'' ruby distribution is spaced apart
... and narrow-cell glyph ruby to be centered.
Narrow-width ruby text in ''ruby-align/space-around'' ruby distribution is centered
Add a paragraph explaining how to distribute space in situations with spanning annotations.
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 annotation box is longer than its corresponding ruby base box, the ruby annotation box may partially overhang adjacent boxes.
This level of the specification does not define how much the overhang may be allowed, and under what conditions.
If the ruby text is not allowed to overhang, then the ruby 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 ruby annotation content is allowed to overhang adjacent elements and it happens to be wider than its base, then the adjacent content is partially rendered within the area of the ruby container box, while the ruby annotation may partially overlap the upper blank parts of the adjacent content:
Simple ruby whose text is allowed to overhang adjacent text
The ruby annotations related to a ruby base must never overhang another ruby base.
The alignment of the contents of the base or the ruby text is not affected by overhanging behavior. The alignment is achieved the same way regardless of the overhang behavior setting and it is computed before the space available for overlap is determined. It is controlled by the 'ruby-align' property.
I suspect overhanging interacts with alignment in some cases; might need to look into this later.
This entire logic applies the same way in vertical ideographic layout, only the dimension in which it works in such a layout is vertical, instead of horizontal.
The user agent may use [[JIS4051]] recommendation of using one ruby text character length as the maximum overhang length. Detailed rules for how ruby text can overhang adjacent characters for Japanese are described by [[JLREQ]].
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.
Line-edge alignment
This section is informative.
The following represents a default UA style sheet for rendering HTML and XHTML ruby markup as ruby layout:
ruby { display: ruby; }
rp { display: none; }
rbc { display: ruby-base-container; }
rtc { display: ruby-text-container; }
rb { display: ruby-base; white-space: nowrap; }
rt { display: ruby-text; }
ruby, rb, rt, rbc, rtc { unicode-bidi: isolate; }
rtc, rt {
font-variant-east-asian: ruby; /* See [[CSS3-FONTS]] */
text-emphasis: none; /* See [[CSS3-TEXT-DECOR]] */
white-space: nowrap;
line-height: 1; }
rtc:lang(zh), rt:lang(zh) {
ruby-align: center; }
rtc, :not(rtc) > rt {
font-size: 50%; }
rtc:lang(zh-TW), :not(rtc) > rt:lang(zh-TW) {
font-size: 30%; } /* bopomofo */
Authors should not use the above rules: a UA that supports ruby layout should provide these by default.
The following represents a sample style sheet for rendering HTML and XHTML ruby markup as inline annotations:
ruby, rb, rt, rbc, rtc, rp {
display: inline; white-space: inherit;
font: inherit; text-emphasis: inherit; }
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 in HTML.
(This is because HTML ruby allows implying the ruby base from raw text, without a corresponding element.)
However, these rules will handle 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: ")("; }
Note that the user agent is responsible for ensuring the correct relative alignment and positioning of the glyphs, including bopomofo tone marks, when displaying text, whether it occurs in ruby annotations or as normal inline text. Bopomofo Tone marks are spacing characters that occur (in memory) at the end of the ruby text for each base character. They are usually displayed in a separate column to the right of or above the bopomofo characters, and the position of the tone mark depends on the number of characters in the syllable. One tone mark, however, is placed before the bopomofo, not over it.
This specification would not have been possible without the help from:
David Baron, Robin Berjon, 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.
The following major changes have been made since the previous Working Draft: