Cascading Style Sheet Styling Issues for Punjabi Language

Abstract

Most of the websites today are multilingual. The information provided on the Internet is in local language. The fonts used for local languages are not compatible with the browsers. The websites make use of Cascading Style Sheets for styling. The effect of using CSS styles on local languages is not as good as it is for English language. There are many CSS styling issues in display of local languages. W3C India has identified many CSS styling issues for Indic Scripts. In the work presented, CSS styling issues like, first-letter styling, underlining, over lining, linethrough of characters, hyperlink display while mouse over, horizontal spacing, etc., have been discussed for Punjabi language. These issues have been analyzed on six different browsers, namely, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera. A comparative study of all these browsers has been carried out based on the CSS styling issues. A number of Punjabi websites have been analyzed to find the problems in display. The websites use Unicode and non-Unicode Gurmukhi fonts for Punjabi content. There are problems in display of non-Unicode fonts. A web application has been created that allows an end-user to apply different CSS styles on the Punjabi text. The effects of using these CSS styles can be uploaded by the enduser. The web portal for Punjabi language has also been created. This web portal presents the analysis of various CSS styling issues on different browsers. The analysis of Gurmukhi fonts used by the Punjabi websites is also presented in this web portal.