TC39 ECMA402 on 2026-06-17

A few updates from the in-person WHATWG WHATNOT meeting at the Web Engines Hackfest that may be of interest to TG2:

Spell check custom dictionary advanced to Stage 2
Localized time formatting without JavaScript was approved for Stage 1. This is proposing to add attributes corresponding to the Unicode MessageFormat datetime formatting options to the HTML <time> element, such that the rendered contents of the element would become a localized representation of the element's datetime attribute value.
DOM Localization was approved for Stage 1.

Luca Casonato is championing the <time> element work, and we'll likely be bringing its proposed API for consideration for Intl.DateTimeFormat as well. The MF2 formatting options can be mapped directly to a subset of the Intl.DTF constructor options, so this is not really asking for any new capabilities, just a different way of accessing them.