OOXML extension for Japanese Layout Requirements

[MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given)]

Francis,

Thank you for your summary of the level of support of Western typography 
by office tools and professional typesetting software tools.

> I therefore don't see a rush of Western typographers to follow the Japanese
> example, nor of office system developers to serve their specialist needs.

Japanese typographers do not hope that office systems support all their 
requirements either, and they also count on InDesign among others.  However,
they also think that the support of Japanese typography by office systems
is very inferior to that of Western typography.

I recently had a chance to speak with professional typographers, who are
interested in extending EPUB for the support of Japanese typography. 
Their requirement list is very modest.  Vertical writing, ruby, and a
few more.  Nevertheless, they are still missing in EPUB as of now.
(OOXML certainly has these features.)

The Japanese Layout Task Force of W3C first intends to publish a list 
of every major requirement in traditional typography.  They admit that 
their technical note contains something beyond the scope of 
World-Wide Web.  They have been requested to classify their
requirements into basic ones and sophisticated ones (which can only 
be supported by professional publishing software).

So, the Japanese SC34 mirror is trying to identify which feature in 
the technical notes has to be introduced to OOXML.  We think that the
kihonhanmen-based page specification is a promising candidate, and have
not reached any conclusions about other features.

Cheers,
Makoto