Ukrainian information
Max Pyziur
WASLEY_PW at SIMON.WUSTL.EDU
Fri Feb 24 14:01:05 UTC 1995
Greetings.
The following was recently distributed to the almost 400
members of TWG (The Washington Group of Ukrainian-American
Professionals). Copies of it have also been sent out to
other Ukrainian-American Ps & Bs in the different cities
across the country to be distributed to their respective members.
It's also being made available to the net.community, as it has
been to the constituencies above, in order to provide a concise
yet detaied guide to Internet resources relating to Ukrainian matters.
Any interest in TWG should be directed to Mykola Babiak at
TWGonline at aol.com. Suggestions for corrections or additions to
this item should be sent to Max Pyziur at pyz at panix.com.
Thank you.
begin attached ------------------
Joining the Electronic Highway: A Brief Guide to
Resources Relating to Ukrainian Matters on the Internet
(copyright) The Washington Group, December 1994
Contents:
1 - Introduction
2 - Internet addressing schemes
3 - Electronic mail & Electronic mailing lists
Basics
Some General Mailing List Commands
Lists specific to Ukrainian matters
Lists of a related interest
4 - Usenet Newsgroups
Basics
Newsgroups specific to Ukrainian matters
Newsgroups of a related interest
List of Ukrainian Usenet newsgroups
5 - File Transfer/Browsing/Wide World Web (WWW)
Basics
FTP/Gopher Sites
WWW Uniform Resource Locators relating to Ukrainian matters
6 - Using Cyrillic on the Internet
Basics
General guidelines for Email
General guidelines for Usenet
1 - Introduction
This is an attempt on the part of The Washington Group to
compile a brief guide to various resources relating to Ukrainian
matters available on the Internet.
* * * * * *
In a relatively short period of time the usage of the term
"Internet" has gained a considerable amount of prevalence.
However, little is mentioned as to what it actually is. Briefly,
rather than being a dedicated self-standing digital network, the
Internet involves several key things:
1 - It is a system of protocols governing communications, the
transference of data and the addressing of computer systems
regardless of their respective operating systems.
2 - Its principal physical component is a system of leased phone
lines run by a non-profit consortium.
3 - There is an administrative entity located in the Washington DC
area. The authority provides bare skeletal outlines for direction
and policy. Similar systems exist in other countries and
continents.
Access to the Internet can be obtained through the established
communication networks existing within many corporations,
non-profit institutions such as colleges and universities, and
governmental agencies. Access can also be gained a variety of
organizations categorized as Third Party Internet Access Providers.
Their basic function is to provide connection to the Internet.
Other functions, such as simple assistance with the use of
accessing software, along with different classes of service, varies
a great deal from one organization to the next. It is important to
note, though, that in many instances connectivity for Basic Service
(usually Usenet and electronic mail) with unlimited login time and
unlimited number of messages can be obtained for as little as $10
a month. Other classes of service are priced higher, but all
within very affordable realms.
The three general realms in which communication and the
transference of data on the Internet takes place are: Electronic
Mail, Usenet, and File Transfer/Browsing/World Wide Web. Each of
these realms will be briefly described and discussed how they
relate to Ukrainian Matters.
Lastly, general guidelines will be given as to how to use
Cyrillic in the context of the Internet. This is somewhat involved
but is presented here for those who would like some background in
order to proceed further.
2 -Internet addressing schemes
Before proceeding it is important to make some general
comments regarding internet electronic addresses. Briefly, an
Internet address is:
someuser at somewhere.domain
where a computer's name is somewhere.domain,
where someuser is often an individual's login,
where domain is often one of the following:
com as in microsoft.com (com being company)
edu as in nyu.edu (edu being educational institution)
gov as in nasa.gov (gov being governmental agency)
mil as in af.mil (mil being military organization)
net as in near.net (net being a network)
org as in worldbank.org (org being a non-classifiable organization)
Further, countries, except the U.S. include some sort of
identifier:
au --> monash.edu.au as in Monash University in Australia
ua --> lim.ua as in L'viv Inst. of Management in Ukraine
Examples:
twgonline at aol.com Mykola Babiak, TWG's president
pyz at panix.com Max Pyziur, TWG member
pdp at access.digex.net US-Ukraine Foundation
In Ukraine:
shliakhy at dod.kiev.ua Shliakhy Publishing in Kiev
mit at litech.lviv.ua Bohdan Kmit in L'viv
3 - Electronic mail & Electronic Mailing Lists
Basics: Electronic mail functions much like its paper
counterpart, providing an easily understandable way of sending
messages of various size to other people all over the world. As
electronic mail is analogous to the individual letters the letter
carrier delivers so too analogies exist to things such as magazine
subscriptions. On the Internet these things fall under the name of
Email lists of which there are about 1500 on almost all subjects.
These lists are administered usually by an individual or a group
that exercises complete sovereignty. Further, they are in two
general categories -- one for discussion relating to a particular
topic, the other for distribution of electronic newsletters.
Discussions on each mailing list varies and can be quite anarchic
at times. Before participating in any discussion it is best to
lurk (observe) and observe the netiquette (culture and protocol) of
each list.
Some General Mailing List Commands
These are some general commands for subscribing and using an
electronic mailing list. Commands differing from the following and
specific to described list are given below.
To subscribe, using mail send the following command to
listserv at somewhere.domain.etc:
SUB SomeListName your_full_name
where "your_full_name" is your REAL name, and NOT your network
userID. For example: SUB SomeListName John Doe
Other useful commands (although they may vary slightly on
different machines - use HELP first to find out):
INDEX SomeListName sends a list of the available
archive files
REVIEW SomeListName returns the network address and the
names of all subscribers (if public)
HELP SomeListName sends complete list of help commands
SIGNOFF SomeListNameunsubscribes you from the list
LIST sends description of all lists
LISTPROC is a new software, performing similar functions to the
LISTSERV, but more sophisticated.
- Lists specific to Ukrainian matters -
For Ukrainian matters there are many lists. The following
originate in North America and are dedicated to discussion.
ukes-news at soma.crl.mcmaster.ca (current events, announcements)
ukes-social at soma.crl.mcmaster.ca (jokes, recipes, rants, ...)
ukraina at ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (general discussion)
To subscribe to the first two you send a message to:
ukes-news-request at soma.crl.mcmaster.ca
and/or
ukes-social-request at soma.crl.mcmaster.ca
with the "Subject" line reading "subscribe"
To submit messages to the lists (after you've subscribed), send
them to
ukes-news at soma.crl.mcmaster.ca
and/or
ukes-social at soma.crl.mcmaster.ca
To subscribe to the third one you send a message to
listserv at ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
leaving the subject line blank and the message reading
sub ukraina YourFirstName YourLastName
In each case upon subscribing you will receive an
acknowledgement of subscription and further sets of instructions
for posting, unsubscribing, and accessing archives among other
things.
These are some lists which originate in Ukraine. These lists
only distribute items; they do not allow postings or discussion.
litech.listserv.FaxPostup.eng daily providing pol/econ reports in English
litech.listserv.FaxPostup.ukr daily providing pol/econ reports in Ukrainian
litech.listserv.lviv-city.press Official news from Lviv's city administration
ukrainet.urp.lat Ukr. Rep. Pty Bulletin, transliterated Ukrainian
ukrainet.urp.zip Ukrainian Republican Party Bulletin
Except where mentioned the above items are in Ukrainian
Cyrillic. In order to be able to read the above postings your
computer should be equipped to read either KOI8 or AV Cyrillic
coding (more information is provided in the last section of this
note on the use of Cyrillic on the Internet).
Some commands to receive subscriptions to the above items:
All commands are sent to
newsserv at litech.lviv.ua
To subscribe, using litech.listserv.faxPostup.ukr as an
example:
To the above address send the message
SUBSCRIBE litech.listserv.faxPostup.ukr
To unsubscribe, to the above address send the message:
UNSUBSCRIBE litech.listserv.faxPostup.ukr
For a list of commands used at this address to the above address
send the message:
HELP
- Lists of a Related Interest -
For the following the General Mailing List Commands listed
above are applicable.
e-europe at pucc.princeton.edu
Postings of items related to business in CEE
fsu at sovset.org
Issues relating to xSU
lantra-l at searn.sunet.se
Translation and interpretation.
omri-l at ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
Open Media Research Institute daily news report, replaced
RFE/RL daily
news report
rustex-l at ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu.
Cyrillic text processing
seelangs at cunyvm.cuny.edu
Slavic & E. European Languages & literatures
slavlibs at library.berkeley.edu
Slavic Librarians
civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu
Civil Society News & Resources for the xSU
4 - Usenet Newsgroups
Basics: The most basic definition of Usenet is that it is a
set of machines that exchanges articles tagged with one or more
universally recognizable labels, called either newsgroups or groups
for short. Contrasting the approximate 1500 email lists, there are
approximately 6000 newsgroups. As email is intuitive and analogous
to its paper counterpart Usenet is not a term which conveys a
simple intuition. One intuition which might conceptualize Usenet
is to think of it as a very large hyper- multi- category electronic
bulletin board (the idea of posting something on a public bulletin
board) spanning the globe. Accessing these newsgroups is done
through the software which is supplied by the Internet provider.
Usenet newsgroups are organized according to their specific
areas of concentration. As an example of the hierarchies, there is
a group by the name talk.politics. To further partition or create
potentially other categories for dialogue groups such as
talk.politics.medicine, talk.politics.theory, and
talk.politics.misc were created.
- Newsgroups specific to Ukrainian matters -
soc.culture.ukrainian
alt.current-events.ukraine
The first has the broadest band of readership of any newsgroup or
mailing list relating to Ukrainian matters. It carries postings,
discussions (and arguments) mostly in English, but sometimes also
in Ukrainian averaging about 220 postings a week. The second has
limited availability and is not carried by most providers.
- Newsgroups of a related interest -
soc.culture.czecho-slovak
soc.culture.polish
soc.culture.europe
soc.culture.german
soc.culture.jewish
soc.culture.magyar
soc.culture.romanian
clari.news.europe
clari.news.gov.international
clari.news.hot.east_europe
soc.culture.soviet
talk.politics.soviet
alt.current-events.russia
- List of Ukrainian Usenet newsgroups -
The following is a list of newsgroups which originate in
Ukraine. The majority of the postings are in Cyrillic, about 70%
Russian with the balance in Ukrainian. To read the Cyrillic your
machines will require special software. The postings on these
groups is erratic; some receive about ten postings, others at most
ten a month.
ukr.commerce
ukr.commerce.auto
ukr.commerce.chemical Chemical production
ukr.commerce.construction
Construction materials and equipment
ukr.commerce.energy Gas, oil, fuel and generators
ukr.commerce.estate Real estate
ukr.commerce.food Food & drinks (including alcohol)
ukr.commerce.household Household items
ukr.commerce.machinery Machinery, plant equipment
ukr.commerce.metals Metals and metal products
ukr.commerce.money Credits, deposits, currency
ukr.commerce.talk Discussions of a commercial nature
ukr.comp.newprods
ukr.dilo.arts
ukr.dilo.law
ukr.dilo.marketnews
ukr.dilo.money
ukr.finance Money matters in Ukraine
ukr.gc.chronical Halitsky Kontract -- chronical
ukr.gc.normativ Halitsky Kontract -- normativ
ukr.law
ukr.maps Network maps
ukr.netnews Announcements, articles re: nets in Ukraine
ukr.nodes
ukr.politics Political discussions
ukr.press.dovira.svit Dovira publishing
5 - File Transfer/Browsing/Wide World Web (WWW)
Basics: FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the primary method of
transferring files, data or software, over the Internet. On many
systems, it is also the name of the program that implements the
protocol. Given proper permission, it is possible to copy a file
from a computer at very fast speeds almost independent of
geographic location.
Since FTP is a bit cumbersome and usually requires the
transference of data before viewing it "Browsing" systems were
developed. The most common basic browser is known as Gopher. It
allows browsing through the text files of the publicly accessible
portions of particular remote computer systems.
Over the last year (1994) newer forms of browsers utilizing a
method generally known as World Wide Web (WWW) have been developed
and have begun to be used. The name of these browsers include
Cello and Mosaic with Netscape gaining the most prevalence. With
these browsers your access is not limited to one particular site,
but rather is directed to several related sites using something
known as a Home Page. These Home pages are accessed by using
something known as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or simply
Locators. Also, given proper configuration, these browsers not
only allow you to view text data, but to also see digitized images
and hear digitized sounds. If you look carefully you will notice
that the ones listed below are constructed using the previously
described Internet addressing schemes.
- FTP/Gopher Sites -
There are two sites in North America accessible by both
methods with various files relating to Ukrainian matters, including
digitized images of L'viv, Kiev and maps of Ukraine, software for
using Cyrillic, lists of Ukrainian emigre organizations, general
information on Ukraine and its government, Ukrainian children's
stories. They are:
soma.crl.mcmaster.ca
infomeister.osc.edu
There is currently one which is accessible in Ukraine. It is:
gopher.gu.kiev.ua
- WWW Uniform Resource Locators relating to Ukrainian matters -
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/WWW/oleh/ukr-info.html
http://www.osc.edu/ukraine.html (in English Only)
http://www.osc.edu/ukraina.html (in English and Ukrainian)
gopher://infomeister.osc.edu:74/11/
http://www.pitt.edu/~cjp/rees.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~djbpitt/slavic.html
http://www.missouri.edu/~ras/index.html
Some URLs in Ukraine:
In Kiev:
http://www.gu.kiev.ua/
http://www.carrier.kiev.ua
In Lviv:
http://www.icmp.lviv.ua
In Kharkiv/Kharkov:
http://www.ktts.kharkov.ua/
In Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk:
http://www.apex.dnepropetrovsk.ua
In Odesa/Odessa:
http://www.vista.odessa.ua
In Mykolajiv/Nikolaev:
http://www.comcentre.nikolaev.ua/
The UN in Ukraine
http://www.freenet.kiev.ua/
or
http://un.cyber.kiev.ua/
or
http://194.44.28.250/
6 - Using Cyrillic on the Internet
Basics: first, it is important to understand that there are
several computer codings for Cyrillic -- all flavors: Russian,
Ukrainian, Belorussian, etc. The fact that languages with the
Latin based alphabet, notably English, have one, makes it a bit
difficult to understand why others would have several.
Here is a listing and description of several computer codings for
Cyrillic:
- Alternative coding (AV) is the most prevalent scheme used in
the former Soviet Union
- KOI-8 coding is the scheme which is used on UNIX machines
and which is necessary to receive and send to the Usenet hierarchies
relcom.* and ukr.*, both which originate in the former Soviet Union.
- pseudo-KOI-7 coding. This is not so much a coding as it is
a result caused by either mailing routines, communications software packages
or both which produces mixtures of mostly capital letters with some
small ones.
- ISO 8859-5. This is a scheme, sometimes also known as
GOSTCI which provides all the Cyrillic characters required for use in all
major Slavic languages.
- Code Page 1251. A standard which is gaining some
prevalence in MS-Windows environments
- Apple Standard Cyrillic, used only in Macintosh
environments.
- General guidelines for Email -
The standards which are most used are AV and KOI8. They
present two
conundrums for Ukrainian. The first, AV, goes by several names --
Briajbin's Alernatyvnj Variant, RUSCII, UKRASCII, Code Page 866 and
several others, but its coding virtually never varies; the second
goes by one name, KOI8, but the placements of the unique Ukrainian
Cyrillic letters -- i, yi, ye, and ge -- vary almost with the
number of different software programs which handle this sort of
coding.
The general procedure for sending email which is in any one of
these Cyrillic encodings (primarily AV or KOI8) to and from North
America
and Ukraine is the following:
1 - prepare your correspondence not using your email utility in
whatever coding you choose to use. You can prepare this offline and then
upload it or you can use your online text editor such as Pico. If online
then for me I only have success creating text in KOI8 coding.
2 - uuencode it
3 - "insert" it or "attach" from within your mail utility it when
you are preparing to send it. The principal Unix mailers -- elm and pine -
- provide for this very nicely.
4 - the person who receives it uudecodes it
5 - the receiver engages whatever software is necessary and reads
the correspondence.
The thing which is critical is that both parties understand this
process.
Uuencoding/uudecoding is a process which converts either 8-bit
text (which is what Ukrainian Cyrillic is in KOI8 or AV coding) or
a binary file to a seven bit text file. This is done because many
electronic mail utilities do not handle 8-bit text (or binary
files) and distort them in the process of transport. Encoding
creates a file which is a bit larger than the input file; decoding
restores the original file. Software is available at many Internet
sites to accomplish this.
- General guidelines for Usenet -
The items which appear on Usenet in Cyrillic come in one of
two variants: KOI8 or uuencoded AV. The things which are in KOI8
you can read directly online with the proper software; the things
which are uuencoded you, obviously, first have to decode. In the
latter's case you save the posting to a file; if you use a
newsreader such as tin it provides for automatic decoding online,
so the process is fairly seamless.
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