Dear Mr. Azzopardi,
What you are talking about are digraphs for the Maltese language.
These are "letters" of the Maltese alphabet, but when processed
in the character set, are treated just as a sequence of two
characters: i + e or g + h-bar. This is no different from the
treatment of 'ch' in Spanish or Czech, or the treatment of 'll'
in Spanish. So there is no need for a separate encoding -- just
use the sequence of characters already encoded.
Regarding font support, standard Windows fonts (Times New Roman,
Arial, for instance) already support all of the Maltese characters,
so there should be no need for custom fonts or encodings. Simply
use UTF-8, and any browser that can handle UTF-8 (which includes
both IE and Netscape) should work fine.
Sorting of Maltese data would need to treat g + h-bar as a unit,
and that would require special software -- but that is already
true for sorting the rest of the Maltese characters anyway.
Regards,
--Ken Whistler
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Azzopardi [mailto:mazz@maltanet.net]
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 3:47 AM
To: info@unicode.org
Subject: Maltese Fonts
I am currently developing Web software and would like to support the
delivery of Maltese content with the Maltese fonts. I have noticed that
there is support for some characters like U+0120, U+0121, U+0126, U+0127,
U+017B, U+017C, U+010A and U+010B. However, in the Maltese language there
are the characters 'ie' and 'gh' with the h being U+0127.
Is there any encoding for these?
Is there any font that supports these characters?
Is it possible to create a custom character until it is supported?
How do I deliver such fonts and encoding to the client's browser?
Any recommended documentation regarding these issues will be appreciated.
Yours truly
Michael Azzopardi B.Sc. (Hons.) IT (CS)
Interactive Publishing Services
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