Abstract
This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Korean script. The target audience includes developers of Web standards and technologies, such as HTML, CSS, Mobile Web, Digital Publications, and Unicode, as well as implementers of web browsers, ebook readers, and other applications that need to render Korean text.
Status of This Document
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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
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This document points to resources for Korean script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications about how to support languages written using the Korean script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Korean script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository Korean Language Enablement (klreq), with contributors from the W3C Internationalization Interest Group. It is published by the Internationalization Working Group. The end target for this document is a Working Group Note.
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Some links on this page point to repositories or pages to which information will be added over time. Initially, the link may produce no results, but as issues, tests, etc. are created they will show up.
Links that have a gray color led to no content the last time this document was updated. They are still live, however, since relevant content could be added at any time. When the document is updated, links that now point to results will have their live colour restored.
This document points to resources for Korean script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These resources provide information for developers of Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support languages written using the Korean script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Korean script and how it works see Korean Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as:
Phonology, and
Syllables.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Korean Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Korean script, and prioritises and describes the impact of those gaps on the user.
Gap reports are brought to the attention of spec and browser implementers, and are tracked via the Gap Analysis Pipeline. (Filter for Korean script items)
The document Language enablement index points to this document and others, and provides a central location for developers and implementers to find information related to various scripts.
The W3C also has a repository with discussion threads related to the Korean script, including requests from developers to the user community for information about how scripts/languages work, and a notification system that tracks issues in W3C working groups related to the Korean script. See a list of unresolved questions for Korean experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
Hangul is a featural syllabary used to write Korean.
The term Hangul is used more frequently in South Korea, whereas a basically synonymous term Choseongul is preferred in North Korea. A politically neutral term, Jeongum, may also be used.
Each Hangul syllabic glyph is composed of easily distinguishable phonetic components (called jamos), grouped into a square.
It is also possible to find Han characters (referred to as hanja) in South Korean text, but if used they are very infrequent. They are not considered here.
Text can be written horizontally or vertically. The visual forms of characters don't interact. Spaces are used to separate words, but lines tend to be broken in the middle of a word, with no hyphenation.