Abstract
This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Gurmukhi 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 Gurmukhi text.
Status of This Document
This section describes the status of this
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
https://www.w3.org/TR/.
This document points to resources for Gurmukhi 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 Gurmukhi script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Gurmukhi script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository Indian Language Enablement (ilreq), 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.
To make it easier to track comments, please raise separate issues or emails for each comment, and point to the section you are commenting on using a URL.
This document was published by the Internationalization Working Group as
a Group Draft Note using the
Note track.
Group Draft Notes are not endorsed by
W3C nor its Members.
This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other
documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other
than work in progress.
The
W3C Patent
Policy
does not carry any licensing requirements or commitments on this
document.
This document is governed by the
03 November 2023 W3C Process Document.
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 Gurmukhi 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 Gurmukhi script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Gurmukhi script and how it works see Punjabi (Gurmukhi) Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as:
Phonology,
Vowels,
Consonants,
Encoding choices, and
Numbers.
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Gurmukhi Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Gurmukhi 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 Gurmukhi 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 Gurmukhi 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 Gurmukhi script. See a list of unresolved questions for Gurmukhi experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
The Gurmukhi script is an abugida, ie. consonants carry an inherent vowel sound that is overridden using vowel signs.
Gurmukhi text runs left to right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces.
Gurmukhi uses 32 consonant letters. The repertoire can be extended by applying the nukta diacritic to 5 characters, to represent foreign sounds, particularly for words from Persian.
A final h can be indicated using the visarga, but otherwise final consonants are written using ordinary characters
Although consonant clusters are frequent, there are very few conjuncts, mostly just r and h, which are subjoined. This leads to difficulties for automatic transcription.
Consonant gemination is indicated, unusually for an Indian script, by a special diacritic that appears before the letter being lengthened.
The Punjabi orthography has an inherent vowel, and represents other vowels using vowel signs, including a pre-base vowel but no circumgraphs. All vowel signs are combining marks, and are stored after the base character. The inherent vowel is usually not pronounced at the end of a word, however there is often a ghost ᵊ.
Gurmukhi has independent vowels, one for each vowel sound, including the inherent vowel, and these are used to write all standalone vowel sounds. There are no unique shapes for independent vowels. Instead vowel signs are added to one of three consonants that are used only as vowel carriers, however Unicode provides separate code points for all the combinations and deprecates the use of 2 of the carriers.
Two diacritics are used for nasalisation, tippi and bindi, each used in different phonetic contexts.
Punjabi is a tonal language. Tones are normally indicated by the use of certain consonants, rather than diacritics.
Gurmukhi has its own set of native digits, however modern text tends to use ASCII digits, depending on the context.
Punctuation is mostly western, but dandas are used for sentence and verse final punctuation.
Gurmukhi script runs left to right in horizontal lines.