This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Georgian 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 Georgian text.
This document points to resources for Georgian 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 Georgian script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Georgian script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository European Language Enablement (eurlreq), 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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This document was created by Richard Ishida.
See also the GitHub contributors list for the European Language Enablement project, and the discussions related to the Georgian script.
This document points to resources for Georgian 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 Georgian script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Georgian script and how it works see Georgian Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as: Phonology, Vowels, Consonants, and Numbers.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Georgian Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Georgian 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 Georgian 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 Georgian 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 Georgian script. See a list of unresolved questions for Georgian experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
The Georgian script is an alphabet, ie. a writing system in which both consonants and vowels are indicated.
Characters in the Unicode Georgian blocks represent 4 different letter styles for, with few exceptions, the same phonetic range. Modern Georgian uses only the mkhedruli style of lettering, though occasionally its mtavruli variants are used for emphasis or titles. The asomtavruli and nuskhuri styles are not well understood by ordinary Georgians. They are used together in ecclesiastical texts as the bicameral 'khutsuri' writing system.
The script is very close to the phonetics of the language, and all 4 styles generally provide a letter for each sound in a very regular way.
Georgian texts run left to right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces. The visual forms of letters don't usually interact.
Case is a little special. When asomtavruli and nuskhuri are mixed as khutsuri, then words may be title-cased, and there was an attempt to introduce something similar for mkhedruli in the mid-20th century, but modern Georgian is normally written using lowercase (mkhedruli) only. If the mtavruli capitals are used, they are applied to a whole word at the minimum, so their use is more akin to ALL-CAPS than to the Capitalisation used in the Latin script.
Mkhedruli has 28 basic consonant letters, which are matched by 28 mtavruli letters for all-caps text. Stops are either unvoiced aspirated, unvoiced (lightly) ejective, or voiced.
Mkhedruli is a straighforward alphabet that uses 5 letters to represent vowels. There are 5 mtavruli letters to match them. There are no combining marks, and no decompositions.
Vowel letters can be used in standalone positions without any special arrangements.
Numbers use ASCII digits.