The Linux Cyrillic HOWTO
Alexander L. Belikoff, (belikoff@netvision.net.il)
v2.9, 23 April 1997
This document describes how to set up your Linux box to typeset, view
and print the documents in the Russian language.
1. General notes
1.1. Introduction
This document covers the things you need to successfully typeset,
view, and print documents in Russian under Linux. Although this
document assumes your using Linux as an operating system, most of
information presented is equally applicable to many other Unix
flavors. I shall try to keep the distinction as visible as possible.
There are a number of popular Linux distributions. As an example
system I describe the RedHat 3.0.3 Linux (Picasso) and the RedHat 4.1
Linux (Vanderbildt) - the one I am personally using. Nevertheless, I
shall try to highlight the differences, if they exist, in the
Slackware Linux setup.
Since such setup directly modifies and extends the Operating System,
you should understand, what you are doing. Even though I tried to keep
things as easy as possible, having some experience with a given piece
of software is an advantage. I am not going to describe what the X
Window System is or how to typeset the documents with TeX and LaTeX,
or how to install printer in Linux. Those issues are covered in other
documents.
For the same reason, in most cases I describe a system-wide setup, by
default requiring root privileges. Still, if there is a possibility
for user-level setup, I'll try to mention it.
NOTE: The X Window System, TeX and other Linux components are complex
systems with a sofisticated configuration. If you do something wrong,
you can not only fail with Russian setup, but to break the component
as well, if not the entire system. This is not to scare you off, but
merely to make you understand the seriousness of the process and be
careful. Preliminary backup of the config files is highly recommended.
Having a guru around is also advantageous.
1.2. Availability and feedback
This document is available at sunsite.unc.edu or tsx-11.mit.edu as a
part of the Linux Document Project. Also, it may be available at
various FTP sites containing Linux. Moreover, it may be included as a
part of Linux distribution.
You may also get it directly from the author at ftp.netvision.net.il.
If you have any suggestions or corrections regarding this document,
please, don't hesitate to contact me as belikoff@netvision.net.il. Any
new and useful information about Cyrillic support in various Unices is
highly appreciated. Remember, it will help the others.
1.3. Acknowledgments and copyrights
Many people helped me (and not only me) with valuable information and
suggestions. Even more people contributed software to the public
community. I am sorry if I forgot to mention somebody.
So, here they go:
� Bas V. de Bakker
� David Daves
� Serge Vakulenko
� Sergei O. Naoumov
� Winfried Truemper
� Ilya K. Orehov
This document is Copyright (C) 1995,1997 by Alexander L. Belikoff. It
may be used and distributed under the usual Linux HOWTO terms
described below.
The following is a Linux HOWTO copyright notice:
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2. Characters and codesets
In order to understand and print characters of various languages, the
system and software should be able to distinguish them from other
characters. That is, each unique character must have a unique
representation inside the operating system, or the particular software
package. Such collection of all unique characters, that the system is
able to represent at once, is called a codeset.
At the time of the most operating system's creation, nobody cared
about software being multilingual. Therefore, the most popular codeset
was (and actually is) an ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange).
The standard ASCII (aka 7-bit ASCII) comprises 128 unique codes. Some
of them ASCII defines as real printable characters, and some are so-
called control characters, which had special meanings in the old
communication protocols. Each element of the set is identified by an
integer character code (0-127). The subset of printable characters
represents those found on the typewriter's keyboard with some minor
additions. Each character occupies 7 least significant bits of a byte,
whereas the most significant one was used for control purposes (say,
transmission control in old communication packages).
The 7-bit ASCII concept was extended by 8-bit ASCII (aka extended
ASCII). In this codeset, the characters' codes' range is 0-255. The
lower half (0-127) is pure ASCII, whereas the upper one contains 127
more characters. Since this codeset is backward compatible with the
ASCII (character still occupies 8 bit, the codes correspond the old
ASCII), this codeset gained wide popularity.
Although the extended ASCII doesn't define the contents of the upper
half of the codeset, the most popular and widespread implementation of
it is the Latin 1 codeset. In Latin 1, the upper half of the table
defines various characters which are not part of the English alphabet,
but are present in various european languages (german umlauts, french
accentes etc). Another popular extended ASCII implementation is IBM
(named after some computer company, that developed this codeset for
it's infamous personal computers). This one contains pseudo-graphic
characters in the upper half.
Software, that doesn't make any assumptions about the 8-th bit of the
ASCII data is called 8-bit clean. Some older programs, designed with
7-bit ASCII in mind are not 8-bit clean and may work incorrectly with
your extended ASCII data. Most of packages, however, are able to deal
with the extended ASCII by default, or require some very basic setup.
NOTE: before posting the question "I did all setup right, but I cannot
enter/view Cyrillic characters!", please consult the section ``'' for
the notes on the program, you are using.
For information about making your software 8-bit clean, see section
``''.
Since on most systems character occupies 8 bits, there is no way to
extend ASCII more and more. The way to implement new symbols in ASCII-
based codesets is creation of other extended ASCII implementations.
This is the way, the Cyrillic ASCII set is implemented.
Although, there were many of them, nowadays there are three. The most
popular and widespread are only two. One is the Alt codeset (so-called
"alternative codeset"); the other one is KOI-8. This one is specified
in RFC 1489 ("Registration of a Cyrillic Character Set").
These two standards differ only in positions of the cyrillic
characters in the table (that is in cyrillic character codes).
The principal difference is that the Alt codeset is used by MS-DOS
users only, whereas KOI-8 is used in Unix, as well as in MS-DOS
(though in the latter KOI-8 is much less popular). Since we are doing
the right thing (namely working in the Unix operating system), we
shall focuse mostly on KOI-8
There are other standards, which are different from ASCII and much
more flexible. Unicode is most known. However, they are not
implemented as good as the basic ones in Unix in general and Linux in
particular. Therefore, I am not describing them here.
3. Text mode setup
Generally, the text mode setup is the easiest way to show and input
Cyrillic characters. There is one significant complication, however:
the text mode fonts and keyboard layout manipulations depend on
terminal driver implementation. Therefore, there is no portable way to
achieve the goal across different systems.
Right now, I describe the way to deal with the Linux console driver.
Thus, if you have another system, don't expect it to work for you.
Instead, consult your terminal driver manual. Nevertheless, send me
any information you find, so I'll be able to include it in further
versions of this document.
3.1. Linux Console
The Linux console driver is quite a flexible piece of software. It is
capable of changing fonts as well as keyboard layouts. To achieve it,
you'll need the kbd package. Both RedHat and Slackware install kbd as
part of a system.
The kbd package contains keyboard control utilities as well as a big
collection of fonts and keyboard layouts.
Cyrillic setup with kbd usually involves two things:
1. Screen font setup. This is performed by the setfont program. The
fonts files are located in /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts.
NOTE: Never run the setfont program under X because it will hang
your system. This is because it works with low-level video card
calls which X doesn't like.
2. Load the appropriate keyboard layout with the loadkeys program.
NOTE: In RedHat 3.0.3, /usr/bin/loadkeys has too restrictive access
permissions, namely 700 (rwx------). There are no reasons for that,
since everyone may compile his own copy and execute it (the
appropriate system calls are not root-only). Thus, just ask your
sysadmin to set more reasonable permissions for it (for example, 755).
The following is an excerpt from my cyrload script, which sets up the
Cyrillic mode for Linux console:
if [ notset.$DISPLAY != notset. ]; then
echo "`basename $0`: cannot run under X"
exit
fi
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/ru.map
setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/koi-8x16
echo "Use the right Ctrl key to switch the mode..."
Now you probably want to test it. Do the appropriate bash or tcsh
setup, rerun it, then press the right Control key and make sure you
are getting the cyrillic characters right. The 'q' key must produce
russian "short i" character, 'w' generates "ts", etc.
If you've screwed something up, the very best thing to do is to reset
to the original (that is, US) settings. Execute the following
commands:
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/defkeymap.map
setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/default8x16
NOTE: unfortunately enough, the console driver is not able to preserve
it's state (at least easily enough), while running the X Window
System. Therefore, after you leave the X (or switch from it to a
console), you have to reload the console russian font.
3.2. FreeBSD Console
I am not using FreeBSD so I couldn't test the following information.
All data in this section should be treated as just pointers to begin
with. The FreeBSD project homepage may have some information on the
subject. Another good source is the relcom.fido.ru.unix newsgroup.
Also, check the resources listed in section ``''.
Anyway, this is what Ilya K. Orehov suggests to do in order to make
FreeBSD console speak Russian:
1. In /etc/sysconfig add:
keymap=ru.koi8-r
keyrate=fast
# NOTE: '^[' below is a single control character
keychange="61 ^[[K"
cursor=destructive
scrnmap=koi8-r2cp866
font8x16=cp866b-8x16
font8x14=cp866-8x14
font8x8=cp866-8x8
2. In /etc/csh.login:
setenv ENABLE_STARTUP_LOCALE
setenv LANG ru_SU.KOI8-R
setenv LESSCHARSET latin1
3. Make analogous changes in /etc/profile
4. The X Window System
Like the console mode, the X environment also requires some setup.
This involves setting up the input mode and the X fonts. Both are
being discussed below.
4.1. The X fonts.
First of all, you have to obtain the fonts having the Cyrillic glyphs
at the appropriate positions.
If you are using the most recent X (or XFree86) distribution, chances
are, that you already have such fonts. In the late 1995, the X Window
System incorporated a set of Cyrillic fonts, created by Cronyx. Ask
your system administrator, or, if you are the one, check your system,
namely:
1. Run 'xlsfonts | grep koi8'. If there are fonts listed, your X
server is already aware about the fonts.
2. Otherwise, run
find -name crox\*.pcf\*
to find the location of the Cyrillic fonts in the system. You'll have
to enable those fonts to the X server, as I explain below.
If you haven't found such fonts installed, you'll have to do it
yourself.
There is some ambiguity with the fonts. XFree86 docs claim that the
russian fonts collection included in the distribution is developed by
Cronyx. Nevertheless, you may find another set of Cronyx Cyrillic
fonts on the net (eg. on ftp.kiae.su), known as the xrus package
(don't confuse it with the xrus program, which is used to setup a
Cyrillic keyboard layout. Hopefully, tha letter one was renamed to
xruskb recently). Xrus has fewer fonts than the collection in Xfree86
(38 vs 68), but the latter one didn't go along with my ``Netscape''
setup - it gave me some really huge font in the menubar. The xrus
package doesn't have this problem.
I would suggest you to download and try both of them. Pick up the one
which you'll like more. Also, I'm going to creat RPM packages soon for
both collections and download them both to ftp.redhat.com and to my
FTP site.
There are also older stuff, for example the vakufonts package, created
by Serge Vakulenko, which was the base for the one in the X
distribution. There are also a number of others. The important point
is that the fonts' names in the old collection were not strictly
conforming to the standard. The latter is fine in general, but
sometimes it may cause various weird errors. For example, I had a bad
experience with Maple V for Linux, which crashed mysteriously with the
vakufonts package, but ran smoothly with the "standard" ones.
So, let's start with the fonts:
1. Download the appropriate fonts collection. The package for XFree86
may be found at any FTP site, containing the X distribution, for
example, directly from the XFree86 FTP site. The xrus package may
be found on ftp.kiae.su
2. Now when you have the fonts, you create some directory for them. It
is generally a bad idea to put new fonts to the already existing
font directory. So, place them, to, say,
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic for a system-wide setup, or just create
a private directory for personal use.
3. If the new fonts are in BDF format (*.bdf files), you have to
compile them. For each font do:
bdftopcf -o <font>.pcf <font>.bdf
If your server supports compressed fonts, do it, using the compress
program:
compress *.pcf
Also, if you do want to put the new fonts to an already existing font
directory. you have to concatenate the old and the new files named
fonts.alias in the case both of them exist.
4. Each font directory in the X must contain a list of fonts in it.
This list is stored in the file fonts.dir. You don't have to create
this list manually. Instead, do:
cd <new font directory>
mkfontdir .
5. Now you have to make this font directory known to the X server.
Here, you have a number of options:
� System-wide setup for XFree86. If you are running this version of
X, then append the new directory to the list of directories in the
file XF86Config. To find the location of this file, see output of
startx. Also, see XF86Config(4/5) for details.
� System-wide setup through xinit. Add the new directory to the xinit
startup file. See xinit(1x) and the next option for details.
� Personal setup. You have a special start-up file for the X -
~/.xinitrc (or ~/.Xclients, or ~/.xsession for the RedHat users).
Add the following commands to it:
xset +fp <new font directory>
xset fp rehash
6. Now restart your X. If you have done everything right, the tests in
the beginning of the section will be successful. Also, play with
xfontsel(1x) to make sure you are able to select the cyrillic
fonts.
In order to make the X clients use the Cyrillic fonts, you have to set
up the appropriate X resources. For example, I make the russian font
the default one in my ~/.Xdefaults:
*font: 6x13
Since my cyrillic fonts are first in the font path (see output of
This just a simple case. If you want to set the appropriate part of
the X client to a cyrillic font, you have to figure out the name of
the resource (eg. using editres(1x)) and to specify it either in the
resource database, or in the command line. Here go some examples:
$ xterm -font '-cronyx-*-bold-*-*-*-19-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
$ xfontsel -xrm '*quitButton.font: -*-times-*-*-*-*-13-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-*'
xfontsel.
4.2. The input translation
The switching between the different input translations is set up by
the xmodmap program. This program allows customization of codes
emitted by various characters and their combinations. It sets the
things up based on the file containing the translation table.
If you don't want to deal with all these tricks and you prefer having
a solution right away, either download an appropriate xmodmap table,
available at many sites dealing with the Cyrillic, for example,
ftp.kiae.su or ftp.funet.fi. Also, I made the table, described below,
available at my FTP site.
More convenient alternative is to install the xruskb package, which
allows you to configure most of the input translation parameters
without having to know about xmodmap.
The following is a simplified description of input customization. If
you want to do more sophisticated tricks, refer to the xmodmap(1) or,
even better, wait for the next major X release, which will hopefully
address the current input problems.
In our case, the translation table should define two things:
� the character codes emitted by the alphanumeric characters, and
� the mode switching rules
4.2.1. The table of characters
This is basically a sequence of directives which assign the certain
keysyms to a specified keycodes. The general syntax is the following:
keycode code = sym1 sym2 sym3 sym4
where code is the numerical code of the given key on the keyboard
(refer to the standard table for your system. In my case it is stored
in the file /usr/lib/X11/etc/xmodmap.std). The syms define the keysyms
emitted by that key in different conditions. Sym1 is the keysym
emitted by the key in a regular state, sym2 corresponds the key in
shifted state (usually when Shift is held down). Sym3 and sym4 define
the keysyms emitted when the Mode_switch is active for the normal and
shifted states respectively (group 2, according to the X Protocol
Specification). In our case, the active Mode_switch corresponds to the
Cyrillic input mode.
These should be either hexadecimal codes or the symbolic constants
from /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h (without leading "XK_").
Thus, if we wanted the key corresponding to the Latin 'a' generate the
Russian 'a' in the alternative mode, we would write the following:
keycode 38 = a A 0xC1 0xE1
The reader might be curious why I don't use the Cyrillic_a and
Cyrillic_A constants respectively. The answer is that it didn't work
for me. I am not very familiar with the guts of the X Window System
specification, but I've got the following explanation. The symbolic
constants above have the values 0x6C1 and 0x6E1 respectively. This
means that in really multi-lingual environment they could be
successfully used without overlapping with any other character set.
However the KOI-8 standard is not well suited for such environment.
Thus, since we want to retain compatible with the past, we will
violate the rules of multi-lingual support in the X Window System.
The following is a table for the most popular russian JCUKEN keyboard
layout (these tables are derived from the ones in the vakufonts
package):
keysym 4 = 4 dollar 4 quotedbl
keysym 5 = 5 percent 5 colon
keysym 6 = 6 asciicircum 6 comma
keysym 7 = 7 ampersand 7 period
keysym q = q Q 0xCA 0xEA
keysym w = w W 0xC3 0xE3
keysym e = e E 0xD5 0xF5
keysym r = r R 0xCB 0xEB
keysym t = t T 0xC5 0xE5
keysym y = y Y 0xCE 0xEE
keysym u = u U 0xC7 0xE7
keysym i = i I 0xDB 0xFB
keysym o = o O 0xDD 0xFD
keysym p = p P 0xDA 0xFA
keysym bracketleft = bracketleft braceleft 0xC8 0xE8
keysym bracketright = bracketright braceright 0xDF 0xFF
keysym a = a A 0xC6 0xE6
keysym s = s S 0xD9 0xF9
keysym d = d D 0xD7 0xF7
keysym f = f F 0xC1 0xE1
keysym g = g G 0xD0 0xF0
keysym h = h H 0xD2 0xF2
keysym j = j J 0xCF 0xEF
keysym k = k K 0xCC 0xEC
keysym l = l L 0xC4 0xE4
keysym semicolon = semicolon colon 0xD6 0xF6
keysym apostrophe = apostrophe quotedbl 0xDC 0xFC
keysym grave = grave asciitilde 0xA3 0xB3
keysym z = z Z 0xD1 0xF1
keysym x = x X 0xDE 0xFE
keysym c = c C 0xD3 0xF3
keysym v = v V 0xCD 0xED
keysym b = b B 0xC9 0xE9
keysym n = n N 0xD4 0xF4
keysym m = m M 0xD8 0xF8
keysym comma = comma less 0xC2 0xE2
keysym period = period greater 0xC0 0xE0
Also, for those using the russian YAWERTY layout, I include the
following table:
keysym q = q Q 0xD1 0xF1
keysym w = w W 0xD7 0xF7
keysym e = e E 0xC5 0xE5
keysym r = r R 0xD2 0xF2
keysym t = t T 0xD4 0xF4
keysym y = y Y 0xD9 0xF9
keysym u = u U 0xD5 0xF5
keysym i = i I 0xC9 0xE9
keysym o = o O 0xCF 0xEF
keysym p = p P 0xD0 0xF0
keysym bracketleft = bracketleft braceleft 0xDB 0xFB
keysym bracketright = bracketright braceright 0xDD 0xFD
keysym a = a A 0xC1 0xE1
keysym s = s S 0xD3 0xF3
keysym d = d D 0xC4 0xE4
keysym f = f F 0xC6 0xE6
keysym g = g G 0xC7 0xE7
keysym h = h H 0xC8 0xE8
keysym j = j J 0xCA 0xEA
keysym k = k K 0xCB 0xEB
keysym l = l L 0xCC 0xEC
keysym z = z Z 0xDA 0xFA
keysym x = x X 0xD8 0xF8
keysym c = c C 0xC3 0xE3
keysym v = v V 0xD6 0xF6
keysym b = b B 0xC2 0xE2
keysym n = n N 0xCE 0xEE
keysym m = m M 0xCD 0xED
keysym backslash = backslash bar 0xDC 0xFC
keysym grave = grave asciitilde 0xC0 0xE0
keysym equal = equal plus 0xDE 0xFE
keysym 3 = 3 numbersign 3 0xDF
keysym 4 = 4 dollar 4 0xFF
4.2.2. The mode switching rules
This is the trickiest part of the X Cyrillic setup. You should define
the conditions in which the current mode is switched between the
regular and the Cyrillic one.
There are two ways to achieve that in Linux. One is XFree86-specific,
while the other is more general (well, not too much, as I'll show
below).
The XFree86-specific way is the following. There are two virtual
actions which can be assigned to the keys in the XF86Config file:
ModeShift which changes to the mode alternative to the regular one
without locking, and ModeLock which does the same but with locking. In
the first case the keys will emit the alternative keysyms only when
the key generating the ModeShift is held down, whereas in the latter
case the user needs to press the key generating the ModeLock keysym
only once and the keyboard will be generating the alternative keysyms
until that key is pressed for a second time. You should assign the
ModeShift and ModeLock keysyms to the keys you want to work the mode
switches.
Thus, if one wants to assign the ModeShift action to the right Alt
key, she should place the following directive in her XF86Config:
RightAlt ModeShift
Similarly, if the action required was ModeLock, the directive would
be:
RightAlt ModeLock
See the XF86Config(4/5) for more details.
The other way is, again, to use the xmodmap utility. This is also
tricky. Generally, what you should do is:
� Assign the Mode_switch keysym to some key, and
� Add Mode_switch to some spare modifier map
Now the key to which the ModeShift is assigned will act as a mode
switch. This means that while it is held down, the keyboard is in
alternative mode.
Moreover, if you add a lockable key to that modifier's map, this key
will lock the alternative mode.
Note: There are some problems however. Serge Vakulenko
(vak@cronyx.com) pointed out that the different X Server
implementations may have different rules of assignments the mode
switches (like, for example, some servers restrict the set of the keys
which may work in toggle mode to, say, CapsLock, NumLock, and
ScrollLock). Hopefully, this is a subject to change in the next
release of the X Window System. For more details, see the X Protocol
specification.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to make the CapsLock key have the same
functionality in the alternative mode, namely, to lock the upper case.
It seems to me, it is impossible to do it, because of the idiotic X
input translation design. If I am wrong, please correct me.
Let's see an example. Suppose, one wants to use the right Alt as a
mode switch and the ScrollLock as as a mode lock. First of all, one
should check the default modifiers' map. This is accomplished by
running the xmodmap without arguments:
$ xmodmap
xmodmap: up to 2 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):
shift Shift_L (0x32), Shift_R (0x3e)
lock Caps_Lock (0x42)
control Control_L (0x25)
mod1 Alt_L (0x40), Alt_R (0x71)
mod2 Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3
mod4
mod5
According to the above, the plan of attack is the following:
1. remove the Alt_R key from the mod1 map
2. assign the Mode_switch keysym to the Alt_R key
3. assign the Scroll_Lock keysym to the keycode 78 (the code of the
actual ScrollLock)
4. add the Mode_switch to the spare (mod3) map, and
5. add the Scroll_Lock keysym to the mod3 map
Thus, here is the solution:
remove mod1 = Alt_R
keysym Alt_R = Mode_switch
keycode 78 = Scroll_Lock
add mod3 = Mode_switch
add mod3 = Scroll_Lock
If you use the latter solution, you may combine both the table and the
mode directives in your ~/.Xmodmap file.
Such files are generally supplied with the various X Cyrillic stuff
packages. The good example is the tables in the old package by Serge
Vakulenko described above.
Once you have such file containing the table, you should run the
command:
xmodmap filename
system-wide file is /usr/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc; the personal one is
either ~/.xinitrc, or ~/.Xclients, or ~/.xsession, depending on what
you have.
NOTE: If xmodmap complains on your table, try to load the default
table first. The default one is usually located in
/usr/lib/X11/etc/xmodmap.std.
5. Cyrillic support in TeX and LaTeX
In this section I'll describe several ways to make TeX and LaTeX
typeset Cyrillic texts. There are several ways, which differ in setup
sophistication and usage convenience. For example, one possibility is
to start without any preliminary setup and use the Washington AMSTeX
Cyrillic fonts. On the other hand, you may install a LaTeX package,
providing a very high degree of Cyrillic setup. I have an experience
with two such packages. One is the cmcyralt package by Vadim V.
Zhytnikov (vvzhy@phy.ncu.edu.tw) and Alexander Harin
(harin@lourie.und.ac.za), and the other one is the LH package by the
CyrTUG group with styles and hyphenation for LaTeX2e by Sergei O.
Naoumov (serge@astro.unc.edu). I'll describe both.
Note, that there are two versions of LaTeX available - 2.09 is the old
one, while 2e is a new pre-3.0 release. If you are using LaTeX 2.09,
then switch quickly to the 2e. The latter retains compatibility with
the old one, but has much more features. Hopefully, version 3 will be
released soon. I describe a LaTeX 2e setup.
Also, both of these packages require the Cyrillic text to be typeset
using the Alt codeset, not KOI-8! This is caused by historical
reasons, since the creators of these packages used to work with EmTeX
- the MS-DOG version of TeX (they didn't know about Linux yet :-).
Switching to the KOI-8 requires some effort and is being expected to
be done soon. So far, use some utility to convert your russian text
from KOI-8 to Alt. See section ``''.
5.1. Using the Washington Cyrillic
This package was created for the American Mathematic Society to
provide documents with Russian references. Therefore, the authors were
not very careful and the fonts look quite clumsy. This package is
usually referred to as a "really bad cyrillic package for TeX".
Nevertheless, we'll discuss it, because it is very easy to use and
doesn't require any setup - this collection is supplied with most of
TeX distributions.
Of course, you won't be able to use such luxury as automatic
hyphenation, but anyway...
1. Prepend your document with the following directives:
\input cyracc.def
\font\tencyr=wncyr10
\def\cyr{\tencyr\cyracc}
2. Now to type a cyrillic letter, you enter
\cyr
and use a corresponding latin letter or a TeX command. Thus, the lower
case of the Russian alphabet is expressed by the following codes:
a b v g d e \"e zh z i {\u i} k l m n o p r s t u f kh c ch sh shch
{\cprime} y {\cdprime} \`e yu ya
It is extremely inconvenient to convert your Russian texts to such
encoding, but you can automate the process. The translit program
(section ``'') supports a TeX output option.
5.2. KOI-8 package for teTeX
There is some new teTeX-rus package. It is reported to support KOI-8
character set and have all basic stuff required for TeX and LaTeX. I
personally haven't tried it yes, although I heard about it's
successfull usage.
NOTE: This package requires you to reconfigure and rebuild some parts
of your teTeX package (for example the precompiled LaTeX macros).
Unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn't try it without
necessary care. Otherwise, you may be better off by borrowing the
precompiled parts fron somebody on the net
5.3. Using the cmcyralt package for LaTeX
The cmcyralt package can be found on any CTAN (Comprehensive TeX
Archive Network) site like ftp.dante.de. You should obtain two pieces:
the fonts collection from fonts/cmcyralt and the styles and
hyphenation rules from macros/latex/contrib/others/cmcyralt.
Note: Make sure you have the Sauter package installed, since cmcyralt
requires some fonts from it. You can get this package from CTAN site
as well.
Now you should do the following:
1. Put the new fonts to the TeX fonts tree. On my system (Slackware
2.2) I created a cmcyralt directory in the
/usr/lib/texmf/fonts/cm/. Create the src, tfm, and vf
subdirectories in it. Put there .mf, .tfm, and vf files
respectively.
2. Put the font driver files (*.fd) from the styles archive to the
appropriate place (in my case it was /usr/lib/texmf/tex/latex/fd).
3. Put the style files (*.sty) to the appropriate LaTeX styles
directory (in my case /usr/lib/texmf/tex/latex/sty).
Now the hyphenation setup. This requires to remake the LaTeX base
file.
1. The file hyphen.cfg contains the directives for both English and
Russian hyphenation. Extract the one for Russian and place it to
the LaTeX hyphenation config file lthyphen.ltx. In my case, that
file was in /usr/lib/texmf/tex/latex/latex-base.
2. Put the rhyphen.tex to the same directory. It is needed for making
the new base file. Later, you can remove it.
3. Do 'make' in that directory. Don't for get to make a link from
Makefile to Makefile.unx. During the make process check the output.
There should be a message:
Loading hyphenation patterns for Russian.
If everything goes OK, you will get the new latex.fmt in that direc�
tory. Put it to the appropriate place, where the previous one was
(like /usr/lib/texmf/ini/). Don't forget to save the previous one!.
This is it. The installation is complete. Try processing the examples
found in the styles archive. If you are to create the PostScript files
without any problems, then everything is OK. Now, to use Cyrillic in
LaTeX, prepend your document with the following directive:
\usepackage{cmcyralt}
For more details, see the README file in the cmcyralt styles archive.
Note: if you do have problems with the examples, provided you have
installed the things right, then probably your TeX system hasn't been
installed correctly. For example, during my first try, every attempt
to create the .pk files for the russian fonts failed (MakeTeXPK
stage). A substantial investigation discovered some implicit conflict
between the localfont and ljfour METAFONT configurations. It used to
work before, but kept crashing after the cmcyralt installation.
Contact your local TeX guru - TeX is very (sometimes too much)
complicated to reconfigure it without any prior knowledge.
5.4. Using the CyrTUG package
You can obtain the CyrTUG package from the SunSite archive. Get the
files CyrTUGfonts.tar.gz, CyrTUGmacro.tar.gz, and hyphen.tar.Z.
The process of installation doesn't differ from too much the previous
one.
6. Cyrillic in PostScript
Experts say PostScript is easy. I cannot judge - I've got too many
things to learn to spare some time to learn PostScript. So I'll try to
use my sad experience with it. I'll appreciate any feedback from you
guys who know more on the subject than I do (approx. 99% of the Earth
population).
Basically, in order to print a Cyrillic text using PostScript, you
have to make sure about the following things:
� Cyrillic font is loaded or included in the document.
� Cyrillic text is included in the document.
� Cyrillic text uses the appropriate character codes which correspond
to the font's requirements.
� An appropriate font is selected in order to print Cyrillic text.
There is no solution general enough to be recommended as an ultimate
treatment. I'll try to outline various ways to cope with different
problems related to the subject.
One way to address Cyrillic setup problems generally enough is to use
Ghostscript. Ghostscript (or just gs in the newspeak) is a free (well
quasi-free) PostScript interpreter. It has many advantages; among
them:
� Ability to run on many platforms (various Unices, Windows etc)
� Support for a wide number of non-PostScript printers
� Good degree of configurability
What is important in our particular case, is that once Ghostscript is
set up, we can do all printing through it, thus eliminating extra
setup for other PostScript devices (for example HP LaserJet IV)
6.1. Adding Cyrillic fonts to Ghostscript
This is important, since you probably don't want to put a
responsibility to other programs to insert Cyrillic fonts in the
PostScript output. Instead, you add them to gs and just make the
programs generate Cyrillic output compatible with the fonts.
To add a new font (in pfa or pfb form) in gs, you have to:
1. Put it in the gs fonts directory (ie. /usr/lib/ghostscript/fonts
2. Add the appropriate names and aliases for the font in the Fontmap
file in the gs directory.
Recently a decent set of Cyrillic fonts for GhostScript appeared. It
is located in ftp.kapella.gpi.ru. This one even has a necessary part
to add to the Fontmap file. You have to download the contents of the
/pub/cyrillic/psfonts directory. The README file describes the
necessary details.
7. Print setup
Printing is always tricky. Printers have different control languages
and often they have very different views on foreign language support.
The good news is that on control language seems to be recognized as a
de-facto standard for print job description - it is a PostScript
language developed by Adobe Corporation.
Another problem is a variety of requirements to the print services.
For example, sometimes you want just to print a piece if C program,
containing comments in Russian, so you don't need any pretty-printing
- just a raw ASCII output in a single font. Another time, you need to
typeset some document with different fonts etc. This will definitely
require more effort to setup Cyrillic support.
To accomplish the former task you just have to make your printer
understand one Cyrillic font and (maybe) install some filter program
to generate data in appropriate format. To accomplish the latter one,
you have to teach your printer different fonts and have a special
software.
There is also something in the middle, when you get a program which
knows how to generate both the fonts and the appropriate printer
input, so you can say do some aource code pretty-printing without
sophisticated word processing systems.
All these options will be more or less covered below.
7.1. Printing only raw text
If all you need is to print a raw KOI-8 text, try the following:
1. Find a proper KOI-8 font for your printer.
2. Learn from the manual, how to load such font into your printer and,
probably, write a simple program doing that.
3. Run this program from the appropriate rc file at a boot time.
Thus, having Cyrillic characters in the upper part of the printer's
character set will allow you to print you texts in Russian without any
hussle.
Alternatively to the KOI-8 fonts you may try to use the Alt font.
There are two reasons for that:
� It may be probably much easier to find an Alt font, since those
were very widespread in the MS-DOS culture.
� Having a proper Alt font will allow you to print pseudo-graphic
characters as well.
However in this case, you'll have to convert your texts from KOI-8 to
Alt before sending them to a printer. This is quite easy, since there
are a lot of programs doing that (see ``translit'' for example), so
you just have to call such program properly in the if field in
/etc/printcap file. For example, with the translit program you may
specify:
if=/usr/bin/translit -t koi8-alt.rus
See printcap(5) for details.
7.2. Printing with different fonts
One great way to cope with different printers and fonts is to use
``TeX''. TeX drivers handle all details, so once you make TeX
understand Cyrillic fonts, you are done.
Another possibility is to use PostScript. I decided to devote an
entire ``chapter'' to the subject, since it is not simple.
Finally, there are other word processors, which have printer drivers.
I never tried anything apart from TeX, so I cannot suggest anything.
7.3. Converting text to TeX
If all you need is just to print an ASCII text without any additional
word processing, you may try to use some programs, which would convert
your Cyrillic text to a ready-to-process TeX file. One of the best
programs for such purposes is ``translit''. In this case, you don't
even have to bother about installing the Cyrillic fonts for TeX, since
translit uses a Washington Cyrillic package, which is included in most
TeX distributions (or am I wrong?)
7.4. Text to PostScript converters
Sometimes you have just a plain ASCII KOI-8 text and you want to print
it just to get it on the paper. One of the easiest ways to achieve
that is to use special programs converting text to PostScript.
There are a number of programs doing such conversion. I personally
prefer a2ps. Originally developed as a simple text-to-PostScript
converter it became a big and highly configurable program with many
options and allows you to manage various page layouts, syntax
highlighting etc. Another tool (now available as a part of the GNU
project) is nenscript.
The main problem with such programs is that they know nothing about
Cyrillic fonts. Right now I am investigating a possibility of
including Cyrillic fonts in them in order to understand Cyrillic. Stay
in touch.
Nevertheless all the blah-blah above would be pointless without any
real advice. So, there we go.
If you don't care about the output quality and all you need is just
Cyrillic on the paper, try the rtxt2ps package. It is a very simple
no-frills text-to-PostScript conversion program. The output quality is
not very good (or, to be honest, just bad) but it does it's job.
Another resort is a hacked version of a2ps. This one is quite old, so
don't expect all new version's bells and whistles in it. But it prints
Cyrillic text and the quality is sufficiently better than that of
rtxt2ps. However, I experienced various kinds of problems with it -
like I couldn't print more than two pages (???).
8. Miscellaneous utilities setup
Generally, to set the certain utility up to handle the Cyrillic
requires just to allow the 8 bit input. In some cases it is required
to tell the application to show the extended ASCII characters in their
"native" form.
8.1. bash
Three variables should be set on order to make bash understand the
8-bit characters. The best place is ~/.inputrc file. The following
should be set:
set meta-flag on
set convert-meta off
set output-meta on
8.2. csh/tcsh
The following should be set in .cshrc:
setenv LC_CTYPE iso_8859_5
stty pass8
If you don't have the POSIX stty (impossible for Linux), then replace
the last call to the following:
stty -istrip cs8
8.3. emacs
The minimal cyrillic support in emacs is done by adding the following
calls to one's .emacs (provided that the Cyrillic character set
support is installed for console or X respectively):
(standard-display-european t)
(set-input-mode (car (current-input-mode))
(nth 1 (current-input-mode))
0)
This allows the user to view and input documents in Russian.
However, such mode is not of a big convenience because emacs doesn't
recognize the usual keyboard commands while set in Cyrillic input
mode. There are a number of packages which use the different approach.
They don't rely on the input mode stuff established by the environment
(either X or console. Instead, they allow the user to switch the input
mode by the special emacs command and emacs itself is responsible for
re-mapping the character set. The author took a chance to look at
three of them. The russian.el package by Valery Alexeev
(ava@math.jhu.edu) allows the user to switch between cyrillic and
regular input mode and to translate the contents of a buffer from one
Cyrillic coding standard to another (which is especially useful while
reading the texts imported from MS-DOG).
The only inconvenience is that emacs is still treating the russian
characters as special ones, so it doesn't recognize russian words'
bounds and case changes. To fix it, you have to modify the syntax and
case tables of emacs:
;; there is a garbage in the variables below, since SGML doesn't like
;; cyrillic characters. You have to put the uppercase and lowercase
;; parts of the Russian alphabet respectively (see the actual files)
(setq *russian-abc-ucase* "*** SGML SUCKS ***")
(setq *russian-abc-lcase* "*** SGML SUCKS ***")
(let ((i 0)
(len (length *russian-abc-ucase*)))
(while (< i len)
(modify-syntax-entry (elt *russian-abc-ucase* i) "w ")
(modify-syntax-entry (elt *russian-abc-lcase* i) "w ")
(set-case-syntax-pair (elt *russian-abc-ucase* i)
(elt *russian-abc-lcase* i)
(standard-case-table))
(setq i (+ i 1))))
For this purpose I created a rusup.el file which does this, as well as
a couple handy functions. You have to load it in your ~/.emacs.
Another alternative is the package remap which tries to make such
support more generic. This package is written by Per Abrahamsen
(abraham@iesd.auc.dk) and is accessible at ftp.iesd.auc.dk.
As for the author's opinion, I would suggest to start using the
russian.el package because it is very easy to setup and use.
8.4. ispell
There is an rspell add-on created by Neal Dalton (nrd@cray.com) for
the GNU ispell package, but I experienced some problems making it work
right away. Try it - maybe you will be luckier.
9. joe
Try the -asis option.
9.1. ksh
As for the public domain ksh implementation - pdksh 5.1.3, you can
input 8 bit characters only in vi input mode. Use:
set -o vi
9.2. less
So far, less doesn't support the KOI-8 character set, but the
following environment variable will do the job:
LESSCHARSET=latin1
9.3. lynx
As of version 2.6, you may select the appropriate value for the
display Character set opetion.
9.4. mc (The Midnight Commander)
As of version 3.1.2, select the full 8 bits item in the
Options/Display menu.
As an off-topic, if you want to make mc use color in an Xterm window,
set the variable COLORTERM:
COLORTERM= ; export COLORTERM
9.5. Netscape navigator
Make sure you are using Netscape version higher than 3. If your
Netscape is older, download a new one from www.netscape.com.
9.5.1. Basic setup
To be able to see Cyrillic text in most parts of the HTML document, do
the following:
� In menu Options/Document Encoding select Cyrillic(KOI-8).
� In menu Options/General Preferences/Fonts select Cyrillic (KOI-8)
encoding, Times(Cronyx) as a proportional font and Courier(Cronyx)
as a fixed one.
� save options.
NOTE: This setup will work with most parts of the document. However,
you won't be able to display Cyrillic text in the window header, menus
and some controls. To fix these problems, do an
9.5.2. Advanced setup
Andrew A. Chernov is the one, who knows more than others about KOI-8
in general and netscape in particular. Visit his excellent KOI-8 page
and download a patch for Netscape resource file, making Netscape speak
Russian as much as it is able to.
9.6. rlogin
Make sure that the shell on the destination site is properly set up.
Then, if your rlogin doesn't work by default, use 'rlogin -8'.
9.7. sendmail (aka "The Doom of a Sysadmin")
As of version 8, sendmail handles 8-bit data correctly by default. If
it doesn't do it for you, check the EightBitMode option and option 7
given to mailers in your /etc/sendmail.cf. See "Sendmail. Operation
and Installation Guide" for details.
9.8. zsh
Use the same way as with csh (see section ``csh''). The startup files
in this case are .zshrc or /etc/zshrc.
10. Useful Tools
10.1. Conversion Utilities
There are a number of programs able to convert from KOI-8 to Alt and
back. Look at SovInformBureau or ftp.funet.fi for a list of handy
little utilities. You can even use the special mode for emacs (see
section ``Emacs'').
However, I would especially recommend a translit package. It supports
many popular codesets and is even able to produce a *TeX files (see
section ``'') from text in Russian. Also, RedHat users will enjoy an
RPM package for translit.
10.2. Programmer's tools
So far, I explained the ways to make the programs accept and display
the Cyrillic codeset. However the full localization of the system
comprises much more. All discussed above is not enough. The system
should be friendly for a user who doesn't necessarily speak English.
In my own opinion, it is not a big deal to become familiar with
English at the level of the programs' messages. However, it is not
quite fair to require it.
Thus, the next level of localization requires the programs to be
customizable to the requirements of different languages and data
representation habits.
Before, that was done by developing some abstraction of the messages
to output from the program's code. Now, such mechanism is (more or
less) standardized. And, of course, there are free implementations of
it!
The good news is that GNU finally adopted the way of making the
internationalized applications. Ulrich Drepper (drepper@ipd.info.uni-
karlsruhe.de) developed a package gettext. This package is available
at all GNU sites like prep.ai.mit.edu. It allows you to develop
programs in the way that you can easily make them support more
languages. I don't intend to describe the programming techniques,
especially because the gettext package is delivered with excellent
manual.
So, if you are developing programs which output messages (have you
ever developed any program which didn't?), then don't be lazy to put a
little (yes, really little) effort to make your program locale-aware.
Request for collaboration: If you want to learn the gettext package
and to contribute to the GNU project simultaneously; or even if you
just want to contribute, then you can do it! GNU goes international,
so all the utilities are being made locale-aware. The problem is to
translate the messages from English to Russian (and other languages if
you'd like). Basically, what one has to do is to get the special .po
file consisting of the English messages for a certain utility and to
append each message with it's equivalent in Russian. Ultimately, this
will make the system speak Russian if the user wants it! For more
details and further directions contact Ulrich Drepper
(drepper@ipd.info.uni-karlsruhe.de).
11. Summary of the various useful resources
a2ps homepage <http://www-inf.enst.fr/~demaille/a2ps.html>
A. Chernov's KOI-8 page <http://www.nagual.ru/~ache/koi8.html>
General Linux Information <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/linux.html>
My collection of stuff related to the Cyrillic setup
<ftp://netvision.net.il/pub/home/b/belikoff/cyrillic/>
Collection of Cyrillic stuff on ftp.kiae.su
<ftp://ftp.kiae.su/cyrillic/>
Collection of Cyrillic stuff on ftp.relcom.ru
<ftp://ftp.relcom.ru/cyrillic/>
Collection of cyrilization software
<ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/culture/russian/comp/>
Cronyx <http://www.cronyx.ru> - the creators of Cyrillic fonts for the
X Window System.
Cyrillic fonts for Ghostscript
<ftp://ftp.kapella.gpi.ru/pub/cyrillic/psfonts>Cyrillic fonts for X
<ftp://ftp.kiae.su/cyrillic/x11/fonts/xrus-2.1.1-src.tgz>
Ghostscript <http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html>
GNU nenscript <ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu>
Information on Cyrillic Software
<http://sunsite.oit.unc.edu/sergei/Software/Software.html>
relcom.fido.ru.unix <news:relcom.fido.ru.unix> newsgoup.
RFC 1489 <file://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1489.txt>
rspell for GNU ispell <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/russian-
studies/Software/rspell.tar.gz>
SovInformBureau <http://www.siber.com/sib/russify/>
teTeX russification package <ftp://xray.sai.msu.su/pub/outgoing/teTeX-
rus/>
The kbd package for Linux
<ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Keyboards/>
The remap package for Emacs <ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/>
The rtxt2ps and hacked a2ps packages
<http://www.siber.com/sib/russify/converters/>
The translit package
<ftp://ftp.osc.edu/pub/russian/translit/translit.tar.Z>
The xruskb package <ftp://ftp.relcom.ru/x11/cyrillic/>
Useful Cyrillic packages <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/russian-
studies/Software>
X fonts collections <ftp://ftp.switch.ch/mirror/linux/X11/fonts/>
XFree86 FTP site <http://www.xfree86.org>