This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the N’Ko 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 N’Ko text.
This document points to resources for N’Ko 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 N’Ko script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the N’Ko script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository African Language Enablement (afrlreq), 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.
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The initial version of this document was prepared by Richard Ishida.
See also the GitHub contributors list for the African Language Enablement project, and the discussions related to N’Ko script.
This document points to resources for N’Ko 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 N’Ko script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the N’Ko script and how it works see XX_ORTHOG Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as: Phonology, Vowels, Consonants, Encoding choices, and Numbers.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, N’Ko Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the N’Ko 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 N’Ko 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 N’Ko 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 N’Ko script. See a list of unresolved questions for N’Ko experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
The N’Ko script is an alphabet. Both consonants and vowels are indicated by letters.
N’Ko text is written right-to-left in horizontal lines. Unlike other RTL scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, numbers are also written right-to-left.
Words are separated by spaces.
The script is normally cursive, but in certain circumstances a non-joining font style may be used.
N’Ko has 19 native consonant letters. Use of 3 different diacritics results in letters for 22 more sounds used in foreign and loan words (mostly French or Arabic). There is also a nasal syllabic, and 2 'abstract' characters
N’Ko doesn't have corresponding letters for g, ŋ, and z used in the Latin orthographies of Manding languages. Also, plurals that are written by appending a w to a word in Bamanan are generally written in N’Ko by adding a free-standing particle such as ߟߎ߬ lù or ߠߎ߬ nù.
An unusual feature is that if two adjacent consonants are followed by the same vowel, the vowel is omitted after the first consonant.
N’Ko has 7 vowel letters. A diacritic is used to create 3 more letters for foreign sounds.
Another diacritic produces nasalisation of the vowel sound.
N’Ko also has a letter to indicate the absence of a vowel, which is used regularly.
N’Ko has 7 combining tone marks and 2 tone letters. Several of these have more than one use, indicating vowel length in addition to tone.
N’Ko has it's own set of digits, which, unlike Arabic, are written right-to-left.
The orthography has no case distinction, and no special transforms are needed to convert between characters.