Russian font question

[Robert Beard]

Devin,

The Bucknell pages and many others set the font (character set) codepage
(KOI8, Win 1251, etc.) in the meta-tags of the page itself.  (Open
VIEW/PAGE SOURCE and you should find the line: <META
HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=koi8-r">.)  If the
fonts installed in the computer are compatible, they automatically come up
in the right code-page when they read the charset command.

Another neat property of Windows 95 is the multilanguage support.  If you
do not already have the Russian keyboard/Cyrillic codepage installed, go
into 'Control Panel' and double click 'Keyboards'.  In the 'Language' file,
if 'Russian' is not listed, choose 'Add' and select 'Russian'.  You will be
asked for the Win95 CD from which your Gateway will download an English /
Russian keyboard.  Also check 'Enable indicator on taskbar' and set your
toggle keys (I use 'Cntl+Shift' to toggle between Cyrillic and Russian.)
This will provide you with Win 1251 codepage in all your applications. If
you want KOI8, and/or a learner's keyboard, you will have to use a separate
keyboard driver such as the Tavultesoft driver you  can download from the
On-line Russian Grammar site. I run both all the time.

Once the standard Russian keyboard is installed, if you don't get Cyrillic
when the 'Ru' icon in the lower right-hand corner is on (you can also click
it to change keyboards), it is because multilingual support
(English-Cyrillic fonts) has not been installed.  That is accomplished by
returning to Control Panel and double clicking 'Add/Remove Programs' and
selecting the 'Windows Setup' file.  Listed there you will find
'Multilanguage Support'.  Double click that line and you will get a menu of
Central European, Cyrillic and Greek languages.  I recommend that you
choose only one; otherwise, toggling between them becomes a problem (2-3
keystrokes to switch from Cyrillic to English and back instead of one).
However, you may install all three.  Again you will be asked for the Win95
installation CD, where the software resides.

The results of all this is that Win1251 fonts and a standard Russian
keyboard will now reside in Windows, available for all applications you
use.  Your machine will read KOI8, 1251, and ISO 8859-5 files but will type
only Win 1251 on a standard keyboard-online, offline, in all your
applications.

I'm sending this to everyone under the assumption that others may be
getting their first Windows machine and may not know that multilanguage
support is available.  Few computer salesmen or technicians know it is
there since they have no use for it.

--Bob

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Robert Beard, Director . . . rbeard at bucknell.edu
Russian & Linguistics Programs . . . 717-524-1336
Bucknell University . . . http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction.html
Lewisburg, PA 17837 . http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian
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