The Motive Web Design Glossary
macron
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A number of Pacific languages, including Māori, feature a long-vowel sound.
When correctly typeset, the long-vowel sound is indicated by a horizontal bar positioned above the lengthened vowel or macron.
Methods of typesetting Māori language
Prior to desktop publishing and digital typography, the long vowel was often transcribed by repeating the vowel. For example ‘Māori’ would be typeset: ‘Maaori’.
With the move to digital production techniques, commonly-used typefaces were often customised for the purpose of typesetting Māori-language documents. The dieresis mark (or ‘double-dot’) used in German spelling would be replaced with the macron. The keystroke for inserting a dieresis mark could then be used to ‘macronise’ a vowel.
On a Macintosh computer, the keystroke combination for inserting a vowel with a dieresis mark is:
[option]+[u] > ["vowel"]
For this method of displaying macrons to be used on the web, a person would be required to download and install the customised typeface.
Organisations that are unable to customise or purchase typefaces that include the macron traditionally resorted to using the dieresis mark (as this approximates the appearance of a macron). However this method is not recommended by Māori language experts.
How to display macrons on webpages
What is a ‘character set’?
In the context of typesetting webpages, the character set is the notation system that the author has used to specify a letter, symbol, number, letter-accent combination, etc.
The aim of a notation system such as Unicode, is to assign a unique code to each character of all known written languages.
To correctly display macronised vowels:
- A webpage must be directed to use a character set (
charset) that contains the macronised letterforms. - The macronised letter must be entered using the appropriate character code.
- The typeface/font used to typeset the content must include the macron bar symbol (glyph).
If the typeface does not include the macron glyph, then the web browser/computer operating system may substitute a character from a different typeface. Failing that, the character may be shown as ‘unknown’: a blank, a question mark, an outlined square or some other character.
The character set is specified in the content-type meta element. This element is contained in the <head> of your webpage.
<html>
<head>
<title>Your page title</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
</head>
<body>
Page content goes here...
</body>
</html>
You can use the HTML text column of the table below to check if the web browser you are using supports the display of macrons.
The HTML text character should match the image shown in the Sample glyph column.
Instructions
- Copy the content type meta element into your webpage code.
- Find the character code for macronised vowel in the table above.
- Click [Select] to highlight the code.
- Copy the code:
- [apple]+[C](Mac) or,
- [control]+[C](WIN) - Paste the character code into the HTML where the macron should go.
Troubleshooting
The display of macronised vowel the HTML text column will varying; depending on the combination of web browser and computer operating system used to view this webpage.
In some cases the character may display as a question mark or with the macron alongside, rather than above, the vowel (as is the case for Mac Classic web browsers).
Searching macronised text
One consideration when using macronised text on the web is the potential impact on search performance.
The issue is two-fold:
- Users are unlikely to enter a keyword that includes the macron keystrokes.
For example they are more likely to enterm-a-o-r-ithanm-ā-o-r-i. - Search indexes are often code-literal: although a macronised vowel resembles a standard vowel when viewed through a web browser, at a code level it is not equivalent.
For searches within a website, a search tool may enable character-substitution: matching macronised and non-macronised versions of the same word. In such cases a search for a macronised word would match the non-macronised spelling and vice-versa.
For example:
ā == a
m-a-o-r-i == m-ā-o-r-i
An alternative is to replace macronised characters with the non-macronised equivalent when building the search index. (This will depend on the search tool used.)
References and further reading
- Character sets, character coding and escapes (W3C Internationalization)
Articles, FAQs, tutorials and techniques related to the mark-up and display of non-English languages on the web. - Configuring browsers for Unicode (Penn State University)
Includes: Unicode fonts/typefaces, configuring browser preference to use Unicode typefaces for webpage display. - The correct display of Maori language text (TKI - New Zealand Ministry of Education)
- [Print] Fonts for download with accented Maori vowels (New Zealand Government)
- Macron filter for Microsoft IIS (Daniel Bar-Even)
A server-side filter that detects browsers unable to correctly display macronised vowels and substitutes the corresponding non-macronised character before the webpage is downloaded. (Free to government and non-profit organisations.) - Report on the macronisation of web content (B Ryniker, The Web Ltd)
A report prepared for Te Puni Kōkiri outlining approaches to typesetting Māori language for the web. - Unicode resources (Alan Wood)
Number of informative resources including:
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