27 February 2007

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Internationalisation Activity has progressed its Internationalisation Tag Set (ITS) version 1.0 to the proposed recommendation status.

ITS has been developed in order to enable localisation - the process by which software created in one language can be adapted and translated into another.

This new system may therefore assist web authors using languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu and Persian, which "require special markup to specify directionality in mixed direction text", notes the organisation.

Designed to provide accessibility support for web pages, the Tag Set is designed to be compatible with DocBook, OpenDocument and Extensible HyperText Markup Language formats.

"Organised by data categories, the ITS set of elements and attributes supports the internationalisation and localisation of schemas and documents," W3C explains.

Additionally, implementations will be available for eXtensible Markup Language Schema, Relax NG and Document Type Definitions/Declarations.

In November last year, the Tag Set was progressed to candidate recommendation status.

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