How do I make text-transform:uppercase work properly with Greek?

Question

The issue I came across has to do with the capitalization of Greek characters by the text-transform: uppercase property.

In Greek, vowels can have acute accents, both small and caps, for instance one in Greek is ένα. In the beginning of a sentence would be Ένα. But when a word or a phrase is written in all caps then Greek grammar says that it should have no accented letters.

As it is now, CSS's text-transform: uppercase capitalizes Greek letters preserving accents which is grammatically wrong (so ένα becomes ΈΝΑ, while it should be ΕΝΑ).

How do I make text-transform: uppercase work properly for Greek?

Marseilles

It is incorrect to close this question as a duplicate. True, as stated it is a duplicate. However, what the OP really wanted to do is get the accents right on the transformed Greek text. But he wrongly imagined that this was a bug in the CSS specification or CSS implementation, and so asked the wrong question. Actually the question should have been: "How do I make text-transform work properly with Greek?", to which there is a perfectly clear answer--using the lang attribute. If this question cannot be/will not be re-opened, then I hope the OP re-posts it. – Connivance

You are right! I've just changed the question exactly as suggested. Thanks a lot! – Marseilles

@BoltClock Can you re-open this, or should it posted as a new question? – Connivance

Answer 1

CSS will handle this fine if it knows that the language is Greek. Merely specifying Greek characters does not tell CSS that the language is Greek; that requires the lang attribute on some parent element (up to and including the html tag).

<p lang='el' style="text-transform: uppercase">ένα</p>

should get the job done for you, rendering

ΕΝΑ

See fiddle at http://jsfiddle.net/34tww2g8/.

Connivance

Hi, this doesn't work in IE. Is there a workaround for this? – Accommodating

If you try your jsfiddle in IE (im using 11) there is no difference between the text samples with or without the lang attribute – Accommodating

No idea except that it could be a bug. Seems to be broken in Edge as well. – Connivance

Ok thanks for checking. Im using .Net so will use toUpper server side overloaded with the local culture and see if that works – Accommodating

Answer 2

Torazaburo's answer is correct but for older browsers (IE version mostly) there is no proper support for greek accented characters and hence you need to use javascript to replace the accented with non accented characters

replaceAccented();
function replaceAccented(){
var e = document.getElementsByTagName('*'), l = e.length, i;
if( typeof getComputedStyle == "undefined")
    getComputedStyle = function(e) {return e.currentStyle;};
for( i=0; i<l; i++) {
    if( getComputedStyle(e[i]).textTransform == "uppercase") {
        // do stuff with e[i] here.
        e[i].innerHTML = greekReplaceAccented(e[i].innerHTML);
    }
}
}
function greekReplaceAccented(str) {
    var charList = {'Ά':'Α','ά':'α','Έ':'Ε','έ':'ε','Ή':'Η','ή':'η','Ί':'Ι','ί':'ι','ΐ':'ϊ','Ό':'Ο'
                                ,'ό':'ο','Ύ':'Υ','ύ':'υ','ΰ':'ϋ','Ώ':'Ω','ώ':'ω','ς':'Σ' 
    };
    return str.replace(/./g, function(c) {return c in charList? charList[c] : c}) ;
}

Here is the working function in a fiddle.

You can comment //replaceAccented() to see what is actually fixed by JavaScript or test which browser might need such a solution.

Anglaangle

Answer 3

What you are describing isn't really a bug in CSS. CSS is designed to stylize the elements of a page. This is an agnostic definition, independent of culture. What you are describing would require the CSS to handle localization of a page, based upon the culture specific stylized CSS would then be loaded. (en, fr, au...).

There are a number of links online that discuss Globalization and localization as well as CSS.

Check the Mozilla site which discusses this same topic Look to the section on Create localizable UI

Radiometer

So you say that it's not actually W3C's responsibility to include this to CSS specifications but rather web browser engine designers' responsibility to implement the generic definition of this property correctly for any given language; and therefore I must report this to each separately. Right? – Marseilles

Yes the developer should account for the localization in the design of the application it that is the requirement. CSS is a language used for styling markup, nothing else. It contains no logic to account for localization. You would need to introduce some sort of code to account for this (server side, client side etc). – Radiometer

This is just wrong. No one is asking CSS to handle localization of a page. They're just asking it to behave properly, and do what it says. In this particular case, the solution is very simple: add the lang='el' attribute to some parent element. Otherwise, no-one has any idea that this is Greek and should be treated as such. The mere use of Greek characters does not imply that the language is Greek and that therefore Greek-specific text transforms should be applied. @BoltClock, It is also incorrect to have closed this issue. – Connivance

@torazaburo Indirectly the OP is expecting CSS to account for the language. This requires logic of some sort. CSS is designed to stylize elements of markup. Uppercase, lowercase period. To this point CSS is doing just that. Some logic whether in the browser or code has to make the determination that a specific character is being used and based upon the condition (Casing in this point) stylize it differently. CSS is not meant to do this. – Radiometer

@rlcrews. Completely wrong. CSS DOES account for the language. Uppercase and lowercase have language-specific meanings, which CSS DOES implement--if it knows what the language is, from the lang attribute. Please try <p style="text-transform: uppercase">ένα</p> and <p lang='el' style="text-transform: uppercase">ένα</p> yourself and see the difference. – Connivance

@torazaburo I stand corrected good to know. You need to put this as an answer if possible. – Radiometer

@Radiometer Thanks. I would but it would have to be re-opened first. – Connivance

@torazaburo It works! So CSS specs were correct after all! Thank you and rlcrews for your help. I've also flagged this question as needing to be re-opened so as to put your comment as an answer. – Marseilles

I think what rlcrews is saying here is that CSS itself does not define these language rules. It simply says that the UA must obey the rules according to how the respective standards (e.g. Unicode) define them. The UA will handle this just fine given the right information, but this information needs to be supplied by the document language, not CSS, since language information is pertinent to the document and not style. See w3.org/TR/CSS21/text.html#caps-prop and w3.org/TR/css3-text/#text-transform-property – Smithsonite