Cyrillic on the Macintosh

[George Fowler]

>I'm wondering if any of you have solved the problem of Cyrillic on
>the Macintosh in OS X ("jaguar") with regard to having both phonetic
>("transliterated" or "student") and standard Russian keyboards.  The
>last I heard about this (from Eliot Borenstein's postings to SEELANGs
>of April 12, 2002 and April 22, 2002 - check SEELANGs archives for
>details), the best solution seemed to be through
>
>Cyrillix 1.0
>(http://download.com.com/3000-2274-9423661.html?tag=lst-0-1)

You can install any OS 9 keyboard or KCHR resource into OS X. (I
haven't tried this in Jaguar, but it was true for X 10.1.5, and I see
no reason why it shouldn't work. Here's an answer I received from a
usenet posting about this last spring:

>  I have a G4/400/512 currently running OS 9.2.2, and I am considering
>  trying X.1 now that Office X is out. But it is very important to me that
>  I be able to use custom keyboard arrangements that I make myself. In OS
>  9.x this is easy via ResEdit's KCHR editing module, and I have a bunch
>  of keyboards for various special fonts and language combinations.
>
>  Can anyone tell me how this is done in OS X?

Exactly the same way, except that in OS X resources are kept in the data
fork instead of the resource fork, so you have to use a utility such as
QuickConvert to transmute the file. The file you want to edit is:

System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/
Resources/English.lproj/Localized.rsrc

(assuming you're using an English system). Work on a copy and keep a copy
of the original! Any KCHRs you add can then be made to appear in your
Keyboards menu.

[Back to George]

This means you use QuickConvert (should be available via
www.versiontracker.com; if not, do a Google search for it) to flip
the data fork into the resource fork, add your existing keyboards
with ResEdit 2.1.3 (runs in Classic), save the altered file, flip it
back into the data fork using QuickConvert again, then copy it into
the original location. (Work on a copy, as the respondant above
said!) I found that I could only replace the file when booted from OS
9.2.2, but perhaps it can be done via the Terminal, I'm not sure.
Save a copy of both the original Localized.rsrc file and your altered
version with keyboards inserted, so that you can replace it again if
you have to reinstall the system.

One important caveat: your keyboard has to have the right id number
for Cyrillic keyboards. Generally, if you use a number close to the
pre-existing Cyrillic keyboards that you find in the Localized.rsrc
file, you'll be fine. The id number can be changed in ResEdit. (This
assumes that you have the Cyrillic language kit installed, as I do.)

If this sounds too cumbersome to bother with, I could email a copy of
my modified Localized.rsrc file from 10.1.5. It has my own keyboards
inserted, including an AATSEEL student-standard keyboard, plus CE
keyboards convenient for each of the major CE languages (much better
for us Americans than the built-in national keyboards). You can
always deactivate the keyboards you don't want. As I recall, this
file is about 560 K in size, i.e., emailable.

George Fowler
--
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George Fowler                                  [Email] gfowler at indiana.edu
Associate Professor                           [office tel.] 1-812-855-2829
Dept. of Slavic Languages          [dept. tel.] 1-812-855-9906/-2608/-2624
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Indiana University                   [home phone/fax] 1-317-726-1482/-1642
Bloomington, IN 47405-6616 USA    [Slavica phone/fax] 1-812-856-4186/-4187
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