To begin with you should be able to read russian on the web. This implies two steps:
- you need russian fonts. There are some installed already: run "xset q" and you should see "/opt/tekxp/boot/fonts/localfonts/xcyr" somewhere in the output. I suggest adding more: "xset fp+ tcp/xtsoft1.cern.ch:7124" and "xset fp+ tcp/mstu7.nyu.edu:7511". Probably you will have to run this every time you login (I'm not sure about the reasons. My guess is: if you have Sun terminal, then execute it every time, if you have Tektronix - you are lucky: once executed it stays in effect until you reboot the terminal). So try it: run the commands, relogin, and check with "xset q" whether you get "tcp/xtsoft1.cern.ch:7124" and "tcp/mstu7.nyu.edu:7511".
- you need proper netscape. Don't run versions 3.xx - they don't understand russian at all. Version 4.0x works only with koi8 and doesn't understand win-1251 (altough it has 1251 somewhere in menus - don't believe it). So the proper netscape is 4.6 or higher. Currently commands "netscape" and "netscape-com" run netscape 4.7 (navigator and communicator respectively), but I don't know for how long it will last, since system administrators tend to remove strong encription versions after a while.
Check that you can see russian - try www.ntv.ru or www.cityline.ru.
To see cyrillic in menus, bookmarks, etc. add the following to .Xdefaults file in your home directory. I still have no idea how to get russian in forms and on the buttons. If you have a solution, let me know.
Now it's time to learn typing in russian (you better know the keyboard layout for this;)). So for switching to russian you can use the program xrus. Download it, uncompress and install. If you are lazy to read and understand the install notes then just follow these instructions:
- assume you have downloaded the program into your home directory. Unzip it: "gunzip xruskb-1.13.0.tar.gz"
- untar: "tar -xvf xruskb-1.13.0.tar"
- go to the created directory: "cd xruskb-1.13.0"
- run configure script: "./configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/xrus", where you need to substitute your home directory name instead of USERNAME
- run "make", then "make install"
- now it should work: "~/xrus/bin/xrus ~/xrus/share/xruskb/jcuken-koi8.xmm". A small window with letters "LAT" must have appeared in the lower left corner of the screen. You can put the line "/home/USERNAME/xrus/bin/xrus /home/USERNAME/xrus/share/xruskb/jcuken-koi8.xmm" into you .xsession.X (or .xsession.openwin or whichever you use) file, so you won't have to run it manually every time you log in. Switch between layouts by clicking on the window or by pressing both Shifts simultaneously (the keys combination is configurable).
- you want to get rid of window header for xrus, right? Depending on what you use:
| TWM |
edit ".twmrc" and add "xrus" to sections "IconManagerDontShow", "NoHighlight", and "NoTitle" |
| FVWM95 |
edit ".fvwm95rc" and add 'Style "xrus" NoTitle, Sticky, WindowListSkip, BorderWidth 0' |
OpenWin |
I never used it, so I don't know |
Now the question appears: where can one use the stuff just installed? I use it to write e-mails in netscape communicator. Try - it should work (don't forget to choose codepage: View->Character Set->Cyrillic (KOI8-R)). If you prefer pine (give me a reason... why is pine better than netscape?) then there is something more to do:
- first you need to teach it how to display cyrillic: this is done by running "xterm -fn -bitstream-terminal-medium-r-normal--18-140-100-100-c-11-koi8-1". Now in this xterm run pine.
- in pine choose setup->config, scroll down until on last page you find "character set": change it to "koi8". Here you go - now you can write in russian in pine.
Next thing: printing... At present life is quite easy. Cyrillic fonts for ghostview have been added - thanks to Andy Hagerty. This means that you can get printout of everything you can see in netscape. A small script does this. Download it, edit to change the printer name to the one you use. Make it executable "chmod +x rprint". Now you can print postscript files with "rprint file.ps" or print from netscape specifying printer command "PATH/rprint" instead of "lpr -Pnhp..".
Looks like that's it. Any questions, suggestions? Let me know.
Next thing I'm gonna do: add notes on how to install fvwm95 - it is X-windows with Windows95 interface. I guess fvwm95 is meant to be used by people who miss PC's too much, like me...