Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!boulder!gore!jacob
From: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Searching for a Russian word processor on NeXT
Message-ID: <130177@gore.com>
Date: 4 May 91 21:23:15 GMT
References: <1991May3.143903.25152@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Organization: Gore Enterprises
Lines: 36

/ comp.sys.next / jmazo@casbah.acns.nwu.edu / May  3, 1991 /

> 1).  Some time ago, I seem to recall there was a post informing us of the
> fact that there exists something to make NeXT capable of using Russian.  I
> lost that in a bad hard drive wipeout (lost 70 Mbytes of COMPRESSED files,
> none backed up :--{ ) Anyone out there, please help me!

Well, I just installed some Russian fonts (the Glasnost package from Casady
& Greene and the freely distributable CyrillicGothic font).  I just use
them in WriteNow.  They don't use any of the "standard" Russian character
encoding schemes, though: C&G's fonts are encoded so that the keyboard
layout corresponds to a Russian typewriter keyboard (ASCII 'A' = Russian
'Ef', etc.) and CyrillicGothic is encoded to correspond as much as possible
to the QWERTY keyboard (ASCII 'A' = Russian 'Ah', etc.).

The fonts were generated by Fontographer, so they need a small hack to make
them work with Display Postscript (Fontographer uses a memory management
trick that outsmarts itself in a multi-user Postscript environment).

Now, to REALLY do Russian word-processing, one would need:

1.  A user interface that allows you to change keyboard mappings on the
fly, so that the internal representation of the Russian text is not tied to
the keyboard layout.

2.  A way to tell auto-hyphenating programs what the Russian hyphenation
rules are.  A way to tell programs that allow optional hyphens what the
hyphen character is.

If you want to have #2 at the expense of WYSIWIG, you can use the Russian
TeX package.  #1 would be possible with Emacs, if I could only find a
monospace Russian font...

Jacob
--
Jacob Gore		Jacob@Gore.Com			boulder!gore!jacob