question about handhelds/smartphones and Cyrillic

Wed Feb 9 09:46:40 UTC 2005

As long as you have a Palm handheld, it's fairly easy to use Cyrillic.
There are at least two sets of programs that enable Cyrillic
functionality, one free, the other not.  Having used both, I actually
prefer the free one:

1) CyrHack V (with other versions for pre-OS 5 palm handhelds).  This
can be downloaded from <http://www.enlight.ru/pilot/cyrhack/>, and is
installed simply by performing a HotSync with your desktop computer.
It works very simply, and also has three different modules for three of
the four major types of Cyrillic encoding available for Palm (I've
installed them all, and use Russian TT (1251).  Earlier versions of
Cyrhack (for OS4 and below) also have modules that allow you to use the
AATSEEL phonetic keyboard rather than the standard Russian,a
functionality I certainly miss on my Treo 600.

2) Paragon Software has a program you can buy called PiLOC (available
at
<http://www.penreader.com/PalmOS/PiLoc/
Russian_PiLoc_Download_area_for_PiLoc.html>).  The nice thing is that
Paragon also makes localization software for a large number of other
(Slavic and non-Slavic) languages, and even allows you to change your
entire interface to Russian.  Plus the PiLOC monitor is supposed to
allow you to switch encodings easily.  However, after having installed
both on my Treo 600, I find CyrHack simpler to use.

With both of these programs, Cyrillic is not accessible through the
built-in keyboard (unless PiLOC has an update I'm not aware of).
Instead, you have to select the onscreen keyboard (available on the
pull-down menu, or by pressing the menu key plus "k").  Then you press
the "international" button, whereupon you can use your stylus to
(rather painstakingly) select Cyrillic letters from the Russian
keyboard.  Since I'm not proficient in the Russian keyboard layout, I
don't use this very often.

The one program I do use the keyboard layout is also by Paragon
Software.  It has a set of bilingual dictionaries that all use its
SlovoEd program, from basic Russian-English dictionaries of various
sizes to a variety of specialized Russian-English dictionaries for
translators (as well as dictionaries for a number of other languages).
This is a very nice feature to have with you.

But the main reason I have Cyrillic on my Treo is to read ebooks. In
English, the number of ebooks available for reasonable fees is growing
quite rapidly, even if people who don't use them have no idea they
exist (www.fictionwise,com and www.ereader.com are the two best sites
for both classics and new releases).  In Russia, the range of ebooks
available is even wider, but they're all free because no one seems
particularly concerned with copyright (science-fiction writer Sergei
Luk'ianenko is one of the few to demand that his books not be made
available in electronic format, but almost all his texts can be found
on the big sites).  This means that a wide range of Russian classics,
recent "serious" works, and especially detektivy and fantastika can be
downloaded and installed with ease.  For example, Pelevin's new works
are usually available in ebooks as soon as their published in hard
copy.

The advantages to ebooks are numerous.   The Palm screen does not cause
as much eyestrain as a regular computer, since its small size means
that you're actually getting very little light and glare directed at
your face.  If your vision is good or (more likely in academia) you're
wearing good corrective lenses, the font size is very easy to read.
The books are eminently portable, can be read in the dark, and, even
better, at boring meetings (graduation ceremonies pass by much more
quickly this way).  For scholars, they have an added benefit, giving
the opportunity to make annotations and export them to your
computer--in stead of highlighting quotes on a hard copy and making
notes in the margins, this can all simply go to a digital file.  The
best program that allows you to do so is eReader, available in both
Lite and Pro versions on ereader.com for the Mac, PC, Palm, and
PocketPC platforms.  This program reads books both in the encrypted and
unencrypted .pdb format .prc formats.  Other proprietary readers and
formats include Mobipocket and iSilo, but neither of these has the same
note-taking functionality, and Mobipocket is slow and cumbersome.
Adobe also makes a reader for Adobe .pdf ebooks, but it's awful.  This
is a shame, since the main formats in which scholarly publishers make
ebooks available are Adobe and Microsoft Reader (a proprietary program
that runs only on PocketPCs).

Once you have added Cyrillic to your handheld, you can download free
Russian ebooks from the following sites:

http://fictionbook.ru/  --this is far and away the best site, with the
biggest selection, and the books work with nearly every format.  I
always download the doc.prc.zip.  New books are added daily.

http://palm.com.ua/?books  --also a good site, with updates several
times a week.

http://www.palmpc.ru/ -- has a pretty decent selection, but hasn't been
updated in months.

For iSilo books, you can also go to:

http://palmlib.palmclub.ru/lib/libhome.htm

and

http://www.palm-book.com/

Good luck,

Eliot Borenstein
Chair, Russian & Slavic Studies	Director, Morse Academic Plan
New York University				New York University
19 University Place, Room 203	100 Washington Square East,  903D
New York, NY 10003			New York, NY 10003
(212) 998-8676 (office)			(212) 998-8676 (office)
(212) 995-4604 (fax)

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~eb7/index.html

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