William Safire

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Deborah Hoffman wrote:

> I for one am still having problems with proper display of non-Latin
> characters.  (Supposedly the Unicode will solve all this, although
> I'm not sure how).  Then there is the KOI-8-KOIR-KOIU-ISO-Windows
> issue which I never will understand, except that it periodically
> requires me to pull down my View menu and adjust the settings.
> Netscape persistently refuses to display Cyrillic characters in its
> toolbar search results, although it does fine for most other things.
> Opera will not perform a "find" operation on a Cyrillic web page of
> any type, which means that if I would rather not wade through a bunch
> of text, I have to open the same window separately in Explorer and
> search with its find function.  And sometimes email to Russia has to
> go in a Word attachment because of vaguaries on the other end.
>
> Anybody in possession of any secrets on this matter (or plans for a
> UN-led invation), otzovites'!

The world is still a complicated place when it comes to Cyrillic
encodings, and some of it isn't your fault, so don't beat yourself up
too much.

If you like Netscape, you'll probably like its descendants Mozilla
(mail/browser suite), Thunderbird (standalone email client), and Firefox
(standalone browser). <http://www.mozilla.org>

Problems that are not your fault:

1) Message describes itself as encoded in Western, but the content is
Cyrillic. Depending on the sending program, you may get all question
marks (unrecoverable), or you may get Roman gibberish with all kinds of
accent marks (salvageable by changing your view setting).

2) Web page doesn't specify any character set at all, just assumes the
visitor's computer will be set to the right one. This is common with
Russian sites, though a bit less so recently. Some browsers guess better
than others, and sometimes you have to coach them.


The idea of Unicode is that one character set includes everything --
Western, Cyrillic, Chinese, Tamil, everything. What used to be separate
code pages are now subsets of one huge code page. So if the sender sends
a well-formed Unicode message and your program can recognize and read
Unicode, all should be well. But there's still a lot of legacy software
out there, so universal adoption of Unicode is still a few years away.

However, if even a well-formed Unicode message passes through another
program -- as for example when you post to a listserv -- things can get
a little hairy (just a little). The current version, listserv 1.8d,
still garbles lower-case hard sign and upper-case R in Cyrillic, as well
as lower-case a-grave, as you can see below:

А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
а б в г д е ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я

À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß
à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ

By the same token, if a well-formed Cyrillic message is quoted by a
program that doesn't believe in foreign languages (e.g., Eudora) or by a
program that doesn't automatically adopt the original encoding (for
example, if the user has his program set to always use Western no matter
what), the quoted material can be garbled. Depending on the exact nature
of the butchery, you may or may not be able to recover it by changing
your view setting.


Things that you need to do to configure your system properly:

1) In Netscape, under Edit | Preferences | Appearance | Fonts, make sure
that the font specified for the various Cyrillic encodings is actually a
font that has Cyrillic glyphs (character shapes) at the standard
positions. For example, if you choose Brush Script MT, which has no
Cyrillic glyphs, you'll get boxes or question marks instead of readable
Russian. It's alright to specify "Arial," etc.; you don't need to
specify "Arial Cyr" anymore because Arial, Times New Roman, Courier,
etc. are now Unicode fonts that include Cyrillic.

2) If you want to see Cyrillic in title bars, program menus, etc., you
have to make changes to your Regional Settings in Control Panel. The
details vary according to the version of Windows you have.


There are a lot of knowledgeable people here on SEELANGS who can give
specific instructions for specific problems if you will ask a specific
question and identify the type and version of your operating system and
email or browser program.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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