(Fwd) Mac Cyrillic to PC Cyrillic to Mac Cyrillic

[Benjamin Sher]

Dear Colleagues:

I am taking the liberty, if not the risk, of recommending a
commercial product for a very critical aspect of a Slavicist's (even
just a Russian scholar's) work, namely, the conversion of cyrillic
codes. You may not realize it, but there are at least 16 different
Cyrillic codes. The KOI8 code you see everywhere on the Internet is
actually KOI8-R, one of 4 (four!) KOI8 codes alone. There is a
non-commercial conversion program, perhaps more than one. You can
find them in my Russian Bookmarks, Software, Code converters. I don't
know how reliable they are. Some of them are ancient. However, I ahve
been using a great little program called Cyrillic Central. And yes,
it is commercial. And even though it is my policy to recommend on my
own initiative (and publicly) only FREEWARE programs, I feel
duty-bound to step it. In the past 10 minutes alone, I saw three
messages and suggested solutions. I replied to two of them off-line,
including Prof. Rifkin, who initiated the discussion in the first
place. Cyrillic Central may not be the only commerical product
available, but once I found it, I had no need for any other code
converter. It works like a charm. And you can try it out for 45 days.
If you are happy with it (you will be thrilled, I assure you), you
will be faced with the excruciating choice of spending $15 on a
godsend or doing without some trivial luxury. It's up to you.
The letter follows with full instructions.
And, by the way, it works both ways, or, rather, all ways, from Mac
to PC to Mac to this and that. Incredible.


Yours,

Benjamin


I have long used a fabulous program called Cyrillic Central. It
converts between 16 (that's sixteen) different Cyrillic codes,
including 4 KOI8 codes and two Mac codes. I know it works. I used it
to convert Chapter One of Vaginov from Win to KOI8-R to Mac. Don't
take my word for it. Look at my site under The Tower, Mac version.

I don't have a Mac, but someone wrote to me to say that the Mac
version is fine. I hope you concur.

The address for Cyrillic Central is:

http://www.hotfiles.com

(It's part of the prestigious ZDNet Computer Site).

The cost is minimal: $15. And you get a 45-day trial period. How fast
does it work? You click on the start button (on a 5 or 6 page
document, for instance). Then, you look again, waiting for it to
convert. But it fooled you. It has already converted it, literally in
the blink of an eye. Actually, in less. You won't be able to see it.
But when you test it on MsWord, you'll see it it's there (make sure
you switch your fonts on MSWord to MacCyrillic or you won't see a
thing). Finally, make sure, and this is critical, that you convert in
TEXT mode. Which means simply that you first convert the MSWord Doc
file to text (in MSWord itself), then go out, go to Cyrillic Central,
bring up the text version of the file (no matter how big), then
convert to Mac, then bring up the new Mac text cyrillic file back to
MsWord for Mac Doc file, make the necessary formatting adjustments
and voila, a perfect Mac conversion. But don't forget to change the
font and to do the conversion in text mode.

Best wishes,

Yours,

Benjamin
Benjamin Sher
Russian Literary Translator
Email: sher07 at bellsouth.net
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/