Maltese, an official language of the European Union, is a form of Arabic spoken on the island of Malta, but written in the Western Roman alphabet. In addition, it's grammar is different from Modern Standard Arabic.
Maltese is written in the Roman alphabet but includes dotted consonants and barred h. These symbols require Unicode support apart from that of other Western European languages.
Unicode Fonts
Modern versions of many fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Tahoman Times CE (Mac OS X) or Palatino (Mac OS X) are Unicode fonts and contain the letters needed for this language. it is recommended you transistion to the newer Unicode fonts whenever possible.
As of Windows XP Microsoft provides a Maltese keyboard utility which allows you to type dotted consonants. If you wish to simulate a Maltese keyboard, do the following:
Go to Start then Control Panels then Regional and Language Options. Follow the instructions for Activating the Language Bar
While in the Regional and Language Options control panel, click on the Languages tab, then the Details button.
Click the Add button and select Maltese from the Input Language dropdown menu.
Another method is to use the Character Map utility to insert individual characters as needed.
Windows Alt Codes (Word 2003)
You can use the following ALT key plus a numeric code can be used to type a Maltese character (accented letter or punctuation symbol) in any Windows application. More detailed instructions about typing accents with ALT keys are available.
Maltese Word 2003 ALT Codes
Capitals
Ċ
ALT+0266 (capital C dot)
Ġ
ALT+0288 (capital G dot)
Ħ
ALT+0294 (capital H bar)
Ż
ALT+0379 (capital Z dot)
Lowercase
ċ
ALT+0267 (lower C dot)
ġ
ALT+0289 (lower G dot)
ħ
ALT+0295 (lower H bar)
ż
ALT+0380 (lower Z dot)
NOTE: Codes with numbers over 255 are only available in Word 2003. Users with older versions of Windows or not using may need to use the Character Map utility.
Example 1: To input the lower case ċ (C-dot) hold down the Option key, then the W key. Release both keys then type lowercase c. Example 2: To input the capital Ħ, hold down the Option key, then the L key. Release both keys then type capital H.
Below are the codes for dotted consants and barred h. For instance, if you wanted to write paġna, you would code paġna.
Maltese HTML Entity Codes
Capitals
Ċ
Ċ (capital C dot)
Ġ
Ġ (capital G dot)
Ħ
Ħ (capital H bar)
Ż
Ż (capital Z dot)
Lowercase
ċ
ċ (lower C dot)
ġ
ġ (lower G dot)
ħ
ħ (lower H bar)
ż
ż (lower Z dot)
Using Encoding and Language Codes
Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
??? "> ...
Declare Unicode
utf-8 "> ...
XHTML
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
utf-8" /> ...
No Encoding Declared
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language Tags
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are meta data tags which indicate the page of a language, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
