Cyrillic for email, etc on Macs

[Chapman, Annelie]

Dear Robert and those interested in emailing cyrillic with minimal hassles:
   I so happens that I have just finished testing several email packages,
sending and receiving to and from both Mac 9.x and Windows NT/2000 versions
of Outlook for Exchange 2001, Eudora 5.1, Netscape Messenger 4.x, and a
couple of proprietary UCLA "Webmail" programs used by our students. Assuming
you will be running System 9.x on your new Mac, I'd say you'll be most
successful using Internet Explorer 5 for your browser (we are finding that
Internet Explorer is slightly more reliable for displaying web pages with
non-roman character sets such as cyrillic than Netscape) and Netscape
Messenger 4.77, which is the built-in mail program that comes with Netscape
Communicator 4.77 (the browser).
  -- Mac OS 9.2, which comes with OS 10 when you buy any new Mac, comes with
all the language kits. You'll need to do a Custom Install to add the
Cyrillic language kit, which will add the Cyrillic "script" that puts up
Russian keyboard layouts so you can type in cyrillic when a cyrillic font is
specified. Just click "Custom" in the install dialog and scroll to the
language kits, clicking to select the ones you want. (A nice set of
instructions for adding language kits to OS 9 is available at the Nisus web
site (a developer of Nisus Writer, but not specific to Nisus!):
http://www.nisus.com/Products/NisusWriter/Support/Tips/languagekitsOS9.asp.)
  -- To compose an email in cyrillic using Netscape Messenger, you run the
Netscape Communicator browser, choose "Messenger" from the Communicator menu
(which runs the mail program), and choose New Message. Then you need only
specify a cyrillic "code page" (e.g. koi8 or Win-1251) under View:Character
Set, and, to type cyrillic, set your keyboard (under the flag menu, top
right) to one of the Russian variants that was installed with the Cyrillic
language kit. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Choose a cyrillic character set first,
then BEFORE you choose the Russian keyboard to start typing cyrillic, enter
the recipient's email and the subject line using latin text (with the US
keyboard). Specify in the Subject line -- using latin text -- what character
set you chose, so your recipient knows what encoding to set if your message
doesn't open automatically in cyrillic. Once you've typed the Subject line,
choose the Russian keyboard to type the body of your message in cyrillic.
  -- To read an email in Messenger, just open the message. If it doesn't
display properly, go to View:Character Set and choose one of the cyrillic
variants. I'd start with Win-1251 if it's from someone using a Windows
machine in the U.S., otherwise start with Koi-8. If one doesn't work, try
another until it does. Or, to avoid having to guess, ask your email senders
to specify what encoding they used in their subject lines.
   Note that you'll need to specify some Preferences for Messenger, as for
any email program, so it knows what your email provider is and your email
identity. Since this is unique to each individual, you should work with
someone at your email provider to get the proper configurations.

While this sounds a little complicated, it really isn't bad, and the success
rate is much higher than it used to be only recently. In many cases,
Messenger will automatically know what character set was used by someone
sending you an email, and you won't need to mess with it. I've found that
Netscape Messenger will read messages typed from a Windows as well as a Mac
machines, as long as you know what encoding was used.

One other word of warning: some people like to try typing cyrillic text in a
word-processor and sending that document as an attachment. This can work if
the sender and receiver communicate about what font/encoding was used, but
there is an inherent danger with attachments -- VIRUSES -- that makes this
solution much less advisable. It also involves additional steps in the
process to create and to open. And, Netscape Messenger is free, so along
with your "free" language kits on the Mac, you really can't go wrong.
Regards,
Annelie Chapman
UCLA Center for Digital Humanities

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