Reading and Writing Cyrillic in Netscape

This page will help you set up your computer to read the Cyrillic alphabet which is used in writing and printing Russian.

Windows Cyrillic

If you are using Windows 98 or 95b (Windows upgrade), all you need to read Cyrillic is provided by Microsoft. Simply open Control Panel and double click 'Add/Remove Programs'. In that file, select the 'Windows Setup' tab and double-click 'Mulltilanguage Support'. Check 'Cyrillic language support' and then click 'OK'. Make sure you do not uncheck any other property or it will be removed from Windows. Click 'OK' and insert your Windows 95b or Windows 98 disk in the appropriate drive.

Once the support is installed, return to 'Control Panel' and double click 'Keyboard'. Choose the 'Language' tab and then push the 'Add' button. From the pull-down menu, select 'Russian' and choose a hot key to toggle between English and Russian, e.g. 'Cntl+Shift' will toggle the keyboards when you hold down 'Contrl' and hit 'Shift'. Click 'OK'. You may have to insert your Windows disk again. When this operation is completed, you should have a small icon at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen (right side of the tray) 'EN'. If you click it a toggle window with 'Russian' and 'English' will pop up. These toggle between the English and Russian keyboard. Windows supports only the standard Russian keyboard, not the learner's letter-for-letter keyboard. You can also toggle it by the hotkey combination you chose.

Other Systems

In order to read the Cyrillic alphabet, you only need only to install KOI8-R fonts in your computer and your browser. If you do not have KOI8-R fonts, you may download them from Yamada Language Center and follow the instructions for installing them in your computer. For this page you will need only a regular proportional width font but if you explore the web in Russian, you will need a fixed width Courier font, as well.

If you are using Windows, you may download the exact font used to create these pages by clicking HERE. If you set it at 10 pt., you should get a very accurate match with the fonts in the graphics. Macintosh computers look better if the ER Bukinist fonts are set at 12 points. They are available HERE. If you are using another platform, setting your fonts at 10 pts. should get you the best match with the action words embedded in the text.

Configuring Document Encoding

After you have installed the KOI8-R fonts in your computer, you must also configure Netscape Navigator or MS Internet Explorer 5.0 to access them. To configure Netscape Navigator 4.5, there are three steps required:

  1. Open the 'Edit' menu and select 'Preferences' and 'Fonts' and then select 'Cyrillic' in the 'For the document encoding' window. If you have multilanguage support, you may use either Times New Roman or Arial for you propotional font. If you are not using the multilanguage support, select your KOI8-R fonts (New Russian or ERBukinist) for the 'proportional font' and the KOI8-R Courier (Courier Cyrillic or Bukinist) for the 'fixed-width font' selection in the 'Fonts' folder.

  2. Under 'View' open 'Character Set' and set it for 'Cyrillic (KOI8-R)'

  3. Finally, return to 'Character Set' and click 'Set default' if you want this font to come up initially in Navigator each time you open it.

For MS Internet Explorer 5.0, select 'Internet Options' from the 'Tools' menu. At the bottom of the page, select 'Fonts' and choose the appropriate font for your 'Cyrillic' language script. MSIE should do the rest for you. You may have to set 'Encoding' under 'View' for 'Cyrillic (KOI-8)' for some pages; however, all the pages in this grammar should come up automatically in KOI8 fonts. However, while the page may come up in KOI8 automatically, the keyboard may not work without setting the page encoding manually to 'Cyrillic (KOI8)'.

Writing Russian

If you want to write out the exercises in the reference grammar, in addition to installing KOI8-R fonts, you will have to (1) install a Cyrillic keyboard and (2) configure your browser for KOI8-R document encoding.

KOI8-R Keyboards

To install a learner's letter-for-letter Cyrillic keyboard you must purchase one or download one from the Internet. Follow the instructions for installing it. If you are using Windows 95/98, download the Bucknell KOI8 Keyboard Package here. It is based on the Tavultesoft Keyboard Manager of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The Bucknell package comes with a standard Russian keyboard layout and a learner's letter-for-letter layout, where the Russian letters are correspond to the Latin letters with the same or similar sound. Instructions for installing the Tavultesoft Keyboard Manager are included in the package. There is now a Tavultesoft keyboard manager for Windows NT available from the author for $30.

If you are using a Mac, you may obtain a keyboard with a Latin-analogous layout by downloading our ERBukinist font package above. You install the keyboard by dragging it into the systems directory then you must set the keyboard extension (under the apple) to KOI8-R.

Printing Cyrillic

If you do not have a color printer, before printing these pages, check under File/Page Setup on Netscape and make sure that the box beside 'Black Text' is checked. When you print these pages, the self-generating words will appear as underlying stem+ending rather than the fully derived word. (That is, after all, why electronic format is preferable.)