[questions/qa-upright-counters-in-vertical] Japanese vertical itemized lists

[taroyamamoto-451]

[source] (https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/questions/qa-upright-counters-in-vertical.html) [en]

As I am not an expert in CSS and HTML, I don’t know whether and how we can typeset Japanese vertical list items by using the web technologies, but I would like to mention what I thought about Japanese vertical itemized lists based on my experience in typography.

There are not any generally established rules for how to typeset itemized lists in vertical Japanese text. In that sense, any typesetting methods are thought to be acceptable. However, I think that the following points are the most widely expected things for vertical itemized lists in Japanese typography.

1. In a vertical itemized list, it is necessary to decide what character(s) should be placed at the beginning of each item beforehand, and it should be consistent throughout all the items in the list. For example, it can be a Western Arabic numeral, Latin character, Latin numeral, Chinese numeral, Chinese/Japanese ideograph, Japanese hiragana or katakana character, or a symbol used as a bullet, but it is not limited to any of these.

2. If the first character of an item is a Chinese digit of a Chinese number with multiple digits, the number is set vertically in the same way as normal Chinese characters are typeset.

3. If the first character of an item is a Western Arabic or Roman numeral, and there are multiple digits, only the number is set horizontally (this is a kind of TCY or Tate-Chu-Yoko [meaning horizontal elements in a vertical line]).

4. In a vertical itemized list, the posture of the character(s) at the beginning of each item in the list should be upright, even when they are Latin characters, Western Arabic numerals, or Roman numerals. However, if the character(s) are enclosed in brackets such as parentheses, there are two possibilities: (1) The brackets are represented by vertical Japanese bracket glyphs for vertical typesetting (for example, if there are an opening parenthesis + (a) character(s) + a closing parenthesis, these will take up three character escapement widths vertically in the line). In this case, we need to decide in advance whether a half-width space should be placed before the opening parenthesis, which is regarded as a half-width glyph here, considering the amount of indentation at the beginning of the line and how the opening parenthesis visually aligns with characters in its neighboring lines. (2) Horizontal brackets such as parentheses are used in the TCY mode.

5. When multiple characters are set in the TCY mode at the beginning of each item, the full (total) width of all the TCY characters should be centered horizontally at the position of the main vertical line containing the TCY characters.

6. In a vertical itemized list, the amount of indentation at the beginning of the first line of each item in the list should be decided beforehand, and it should be consistent throughout all the items in the list.

7. In a vertical itemized list, the amount of indentation at the beginning of the second and subsequent lines of each item should be decided in advance, and this should be consistent throughout all the items in the list. It should be noted that there are cases where the starting position of the second and subsequent lines is set to a higher (or lower) level than that of the first line, or to the same level. But a vertical itemized list composed of multiple items as a whole tend to be indented, In some cases, a blank line may be inserted before and after an itemized list, though this is not always needed.

8. As each line proceeds vertically in a vertical itemized list in Japanese, any delimiter symbol that follows the first character of a list item should not be treated in the TCY mode. If a Western proportional character such as a full stop is used as the delimiter in the original text, it should be deleted or replaced with a more appropriate Japanese full-width symbol glyph.

[r12a]

@taroyamamoto-451 thank you for your comments. I have added a section to https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/questions/qa-upright-counters-in-vertical.html to try to address the need for the styling in your examples, although unfortunately the required CSS is not yet supported by browsers. (I will later raise a bug report about it.)

[taroyamamoto-451]

I would like to add some more comments to make the most basic points clearer. Please look at the attached image.
I think that the type area for a Japanese vertical itemized list can be most characterized by the following elements that specify dimensions:

A. The amount of the indentation from the top side of the main type area containing the list to the top of the first character of the first line of the list that works as an item counter, which is composed of one or more upright TCY digits, which may be put between Japanese full-width opening and closing parentheses (if a pair of vertical glyphs for the parentheses are used in a vertical line) or full-width/proportional opening and closing parentheses (in a horizontal line or if the horizontal parenthesis glyphs are set in the TCY mode in a vertical line).

B. The amount of the indentation from the top side of the main type area containing the list to the top of the first character of the content of the item following the item counter.

C. The amount of the indentation from the top side of the main type area containing the list to the top of the lines second and subsequent lines following the first line.
In principle, the designer of the page should be able to freely specify each of these three elements, as long as the difference between A and B can have a sufficient space to contain an item counter and an aesthetically appropriate amount of space after the counter.

In addition, although this is not special to lines in an item list but applies to any lines in an ordinary main body text, the designer of the page should be able to specify whether the opening parenthesis or quote that comes at the beginning of a line (or at the beginning of a text element in a line that works similarly to the beginning of a line like that which is specified by B in this case*) should be treated as a half-width glyph without any space or as a full-width glyph with a half-width blank space before the glyph image (as shown by two circled numbers in this image). The mode of the top-of-the-line treatment can affect the settings of the amounts of the indentations A, B and C mentioned above.

In the example shown in the image, the parentheses are treated as half-width glyphs.

*― It is possible that the content of each item after its counter begins with an opening parenthesis or quote.

[r12a]

The gaps before and after the counter, and the line-start gap for subsequent lines in the paragraph are set using other CSS properties. Perhaps i should provide an example.

[taroyamamoto-451]

I updated the samples of Japanese vertical itemized list. I corrected some errors in my typesetting options, and these look better than the previous version.

[taroyamamoto-451]

Also, based on a recent discussion at the editorial meeting of the JLREQ-D project, I added three samples. I would like to explain what the additional samples display.
First, this sample shows an example of list item counters aligned at the beginning of the line. The following points can be seen in this sample:

1. Each counter in this sample is composed of Chinese numbers (and the circular symbol meaning “zero”) followed by a Japanese comma which works as the delimiter separating the item counter and the first character of the body text of the current item.
2. As the top of each counter is aligned at the fixed position specified by A, as the number of digits of it grows, the counter itself grows downward.
3. If the number of digits becomes greater than two in this case, the length of the counter is longer than the length specified by B. As the result, the starting position of the body text of the item is also shifted downward by the amount of the fixed amount of space, which is the difference between B and D.
4. Because of 3 above, it is possible to specify the starting position of the body text of each item by specifying D and E, instead of B.
   

[taroyamamoto-451]

5. The same thing applies to Japanese itemized lists set in the horizontal writing mode using item counters with Western Arabic numerals, if the tops of item counters are aligned, as shown in the next sample.
   

[taroyamamoto-451]

If an item counter is set in the flush-left alignment style as shown in the next sample, the counter can grow from right to left in the opposite direction to the procession of the line, as the number of digits grows. However, if the number of digits increases beyond a certain point, and the counter becomes unable to fit in the space between D and D, the counter will start to grow in the same direction as the procession of the line.