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[Keola Donaghy]

Aloha Ted, we've been using Unicode on our sites for Hawaiian for many  
years. This is the CSS code that I use in all of them and it seems to  
work well on contemporary OS and browsers:

font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode,Arial Unicode MS,Lucida  
Grande,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;

Lucida Sans Unicode is the most ubiquitous of the Windows fonts, Arial  
Unicode MS came with some older installations, and Lucida Grande is  
the best Macintosh font for viewing on the web as I have been told it  
has the largest collection of characters. The final two are fallbacks.  
Arial on Windows has our Hawaiian diacritics (not sure about how  
extensive the rest of its character set is) and then Helvetica again  
for Mac users.

If you're not familiar with the way CSS works (my apologies if you do  
already), it will start with the first font, and the browser will use  
the first listed font which has the characters you need. If none of  
them have the characters you need, then you might get a square box or  
question mark.

Most contemporary browsers seem to try to locate a font that has a  
character missing from the font that you have specified. For example,  
if you specify Lucida Sans Unicode only and a Mac user visits your  
site with Safari or Firefox, the browser will compensate and use  
Lucida Grande to display the unicode characters.

It would be helpful if your users provided the operating system and  
browser versions they are using.

I noticed you're using Ning. Are you localizing the site as well? I  
started a Hawaiian translation of Ning a few weeks ago and got  
sidetracked. Their localization tools are impressive and very easy to  
use. I was going to try to register to take a look at the site but it  
asked "Band(s) of The Colville Tribes:" to which I have no reply. You  
can customize the CSS in Ning, though I haven't done so myself yet.

Hope this helps,

Keola


On 12 Pep. 2008, at 10:30 AM, Ted Moomaw wrote:

> I work at the Omak language and cultural preservation program for  
> the Colville confederated tribes.  My question is that I would like  
> to start a website for online lessons and also a place to chat using  
> our unicode font.  Do you know of anyone who has started a language  
> chat forum that uses unicode, the font we use is called lucida sans  
> unicode.  I have a few friends that read and write in our lang. and  
> I think many others would soon catch on w/ such a place to visit  
> online.  I was also thinking it would be nice to have an interactive  
> dictionary on the same site.
>
> There has recently been added a website called  
> oneheartforthepeople.com it is a locally started website for general  
> interest locally,  I started an okanogan language group on there,  
> and on my home computer I can perfectly read everyones font, but at  
> my work computer where we almost exclusively use unicode I cannot  
> read the font from that site, also many others are unable to  
> correctly recieve the font.  If you know of anyone I might contact  
> who has started a site that is unicode supported would you please  
> help.
>



========================================================================
Keola Donaghy
Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Studies
Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikolani             keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu
University of Hawai'i at Hilo           http://www2.hawaii.edu/~donaghy/

"Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam."  (Irish Gaelic saying)
A country without its language is a country without its soul.
========================================================================



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