(Fwd) Mac Cyrillic to PC Cyrillic to Mac Cyrillic

[Max Pyziur]

At 12:26 PM 4/9/98 -600, Benjamin Sher wrote:
>Dear Colleagues:
>
[...enthusiasm deleted]

>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

Actually, this is the address for a ZDnet website.  The address for the
company which develops and markets this software is http://www.cyrillic.com/

There is also a freeware Cyrillic encoding conversion progarm available at
www.brama.com/compute/ for Windows 3.x and win95, among other places.

However, I think the question which is being addressed here is how do you
convert a file which is for a Mac to one which is for a PC without losing
any of the attendant formating.

At 12:03 PM 4/9/98 +0100, J Douglas Clayton wrote:
>I'm replying to this on list since other seelangers might have things to
>add. My Mac can read PC files in a variety of formats. It can also save Mac
>files in Word as PC files. The problem is thus really one of fonts. It
>would be good to know if there is one cyrillic font that has exactly the
>same distribution of characters as a similar font for Mac.

I don't think that it is just a problem of fonts.  Macintosh systems have
something which is known as their "Worldscript" technology.  I've been
apprised of this but never had to deal with it directly.  But as far as I
can tell, it along with probably several other things make it difficult to
transfer a Word5 file using Cyrillic CP1251 coding created on a Macintosh
to a PC (someone might say here that PC's don't read Mac disks or files;
plenty of utilities for PCs on Simtel's archives (www.simtel.net) which
give PCs the capablity to read Mac diskettes).

>Doug Clayton


>(It's part of the prestigious ZDNet Computer Site).
>
[...]
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Yours,
>
>Benjamin
>Benjamin Sher
>Russian Literary Translator
>Email: sher07 at bellsouth.net

Max Pyziur
pyz at panix.com