Note: This document is in utf-8 (Unicode). See bottom of page. http://www.cs.um.edu.mt/~srl/SMC/

Society for Maltese Computing – Keyboard Issues

[ Back to: SMC Charter | SMC Home ]

Keyboard support continues to be an urgent and controversial issue.

Resources

You can follow the discussions on the maltese-computing mailing list.

Principles

1. While switching layouts between English and Maltese is possible on many if not all systems, it is not a good idea to depend on this. A clear example is that Maltese surnames are typically written with Italian orthography for historical purposes, and so the undotted “c” must remain available. (Fenech, Caruana, and so on, which would be K in Maltese orthography.) Furthermore, English words are at least interspersed even in Maltese text, and everyone switches languages naturally.

2. It would not be desirable to place the Maltese letters in a place where the key is subject to change on different keyboard models, or on US vs. British English layouts, or based on the computer type. For example, the following keys at least have many different positions depending on keyboard type and model: ` (backquote) and \ (backslash).

Old texts

Old text from the charter, put here until I get to putting it elsewhere..

1. Need to place the extra letters
2. Use unneeded 'y' for 'ħ'?
3. Make c always be ċ
4. Need variations for US, UK, probably FR-CA keyboards.
5. English is used often - must not make English letters inaccessible.
6. It's probably good to just have a 'switch' key for switching between English and Maltese layouts.
7. Could have self-adhesive stickers for denoting the Maltese keys.
8. Should the Għajn (Gh) be a single key? Should IE? It's popular, BUT... these really are two latin letters. How should the user enter the three capitalisation combinations: gh, Gh, GH? People are used to

Current proposals

Back to the charter

---

http://www.cs.um.edu.mt/~srl/SMC srl (at) um.edu.mt  -  srl (at) monkey.sbay.org
Note: The opinions stated in this page are my responsibility and should not be construed as endorsement or policy on the part of any other organisation or agency.

Test your Browser – this page is in Unicode! (UTF-8)

ċ=c with dot,
Ċ=C with dot,
ġ=g with dot,
Ġ=G with dot,
ħ=h with slash,
Ħ=H with slash,
ż=z with dot,
Ż=Z with dot.

Steven R. Loomis, $Id: keyboard.html,v 1.1 2001/09/23 14:19:22 srl Exp $