Malayalam is a syllabic alphabet in that it consists of consonants with vowel signs.
Although Unicode includes Malayalam, support from major software vendors is just now catching up. Therefore many Malayalam sites may offer custom fonts or be written in the Latin alphabet.
Fonts may vary in performance from browser to browser. Some Linux fonts may not be recognized by Windows, and vowel marks may be incorrectly placed on Mac on any font.
See also
Windows - Once a third party font has been installed, Malayalam will be properly displayed on these Windows browsers. Click on links to adjust font preferences.
Macintosh OS X - Even with third party fonts installed, some Malayalam vowel signs will be improperly displayed.
Note on System 9: Because Unicode support is incomplete in System 9, it may be beneficial to upgrade to OS X if you need to work with Unicode.
If you see Roman character gibberish instead of a South Asian script, you will need to manually switch from Western encoding view to the Unicode encoding under the View menu of your browser.
If you have your browser configured correctly, the Web sites above should display the correct characters. If you have difficulties, see list below for font and browser configuration instructions.
In order to integrate foreign scripts into your computer, you must set up "keyboard" utilities in your operating system. Keyboards will allow you to switch between typing English and other languages in word processors and Web tools. This process will also make sure the correct fonts are installed are availble for Windows or Macintosh.
As of Spring 2005, the international word processor Global Writer is available in the Student Computing Labs. This allows users to easily switch keyboards, including phonetic keyboards which mimic a QWERTY keyboard.
CLC Student Computing Labs: To open Global Writer, go to the Start » Internatinal Language Support » Unitype Global Writer.
Global Writer is available from Unitype for personal purchace.
There is a Malayalam keyboard available in Vista and Windows XP with Service Pack 2. See the Windows Complex Scripts Keyboard Instructions for details on how to activate the keyboard. To see where the critical keys are, go to the Microsoft Keyboard Layouts Page.
Apple does not currently provide a Malayalam keyboard, but
Note: Unicode fonts can be installed to view encoded Web pages. See the Browser Set Up section below for details
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
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
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
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
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
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 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.
Unless a third party keyboard which supports Unicode is installed, you must use the Unicode chart for Malayalam and enter HTML entity codes.
In some cases, your best options may be to use PDF files or image files. See the Web Development Tips section for more details.
Fonts may vary in performance from browser to browser. Some Linux fonts may not be recognized by Windows, and vowel marks may be incorrectly placed on Mac on any font.
See also
