Ruby HTML element

I still remember the day I discovered the <ruby /> HTML tag, I thought; “WTF, can we run Ruby code with that?” and I tried a simple hello world:

<ruby>
puts 'Hello, World!'
</ruby>

Of course, it didn’t worked, the HTML Ruby tag is not for that Ruby, it is for Ruby annotations.

Ruby annotation

Ruby annotations are used to provide a pronunciation guide for characters that could be unfamiliar to the reader, it’s typically used in East Asian language such as Japanese and Chinese. “Ruby” is the term used for a run of text that is associated with another text, referred to as the base text.

In 2001, W3C published a specification for the Ruby markup and even though the specification is finished, most browsers still has only partial support, check Can I use? for more browser support information.

Markup

Ruby markup consist in five HTML tags; ruby, rt, rtc, rp and rb.

• ruby represents a ruby annotation.
• rt (ruby text) specifies the ruby text component of a ruby annotation.
• rtc (ruby text container) embraces semantic annotations of characters presented in a ruby annotation.
• rp (ruby parenthesis) provides a fallback parentheses for browsers that do not support ruby annotation.
• rb can have both pronunciation (rt) and semantic (rtc) annotations

Examples

The examples below provides a quick overview about the ruby markup, which is very straightforward.

This simple example shows the vowels in Japanese Hiragana.

<ruby>
  あ <rt>a</rt>
  い <rt>i</rt>
  う <rt>u</rt>
  え <rt>e</rt>
  お <rt>o</rt>
</ruby>

Here is the final result, if your browser support ruby annotations.

あ a い i う u え e お o

In this example, we are also showing the vowels in Japanese Hiragana, but, we are also providing a fallback for browsers that don’t support ruby annotations.

<ruby>
  あ <rp>(</rp><rt>a</rt><rp>)</rp>
  い <rp>(</rp><rt>i</rt><rp>)</rp>
  う <rp>(</rp><rt>u</rt><rp>)</rp>
  え <rp>(</rp><rt>e</rt><rp>)</rp>
  お <rp>(</rp><rt>o</rt><rp>)</rp>
</ruby>

If your browser don’t support ruby annotations, you would see something like this:

あ (a) い (i) う (u) え (e) お (o)

And here, we are using the rtc element.

<ruby>
  <rb>日本</rb><rt></rt>
  <rtc>Japan</rtc>
</ruby>

日本Nihon Japan

You can also provide styles for each tags showed above, given the previous rtc example, you can pass any HTML attribute and use styles as well.

<ruby class="some-ruby-sample" id="some-id">
  <rb>日本</rb><rt class="ruby-text">Nihon</rt>
  <rtc>Japan</rtc>
</ruby>

<style>
.some-ruby-sample {
  padding: 5px;
}

.ruby-text {
  background-color: #BC002D;
  color: #FFF;
}
</style>

日本Nihon Japan

The result will be as above.

Wrapping up

And that’s all, I really enjoy to explore not-so-used features of a language or system, it makes me appreciate even more all the hard work and effort that people put together to build something. 😃

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