!Pluto and cyrillic input
Paul Sprangers
Dear all,
This may either have been covered before, or just being a silly question
anyway, but since I discovered today how easy it is to send cyrillic
e-mails on a Windows computer, I wonder if this might be possible on RISC
OS as well - with a little more effort.
When I examine the cyrillic mail in !Zap, all the Russian characters are
represented by question marks (&3F). Miraculously, when viewed in NetSurf,
they turn into readable Russian!
What I would like to achieve, is typing cyrillic characters directly into a
!Pluto window, and have the guarantee that the receiver will be able to
read the mail directly.
Probably, I can write the necessary keyboard driver myself, but what else
should be done - if it can be done in the first place?
Kind regards,
Paul Sprangers
Theo Markettos
> What I would like to achieve, is typing cyrillic characters directly into a
> !Pluto window, and have the guarantee that the receiver will be able to
> read the mail directly.
>
> Probably, I can write the necessary keyboard driver myself, but what else
> should be done - if it can be done in the first place?
AFAIK neither Pluto nor Messenger Pro do anything other than Latin 1. But
you should be able to do a hack:
Type *Keyboard Russia and *Alphabet Cyrillic
(I don't know which version you're on, but I think RISC OS 4 includes a
Russian driver. I think RISC OS 5 might too)
Type your mail in Edit or some other editor that can be persuaded to use the
system font, or a Cyrillic outline font, or a Zap Cyrillic bitmap font (if
such exist). You might be able to use Pluto's editor if you can select a
Cyrillic font.
Pressing Alt+Cyrillic char should give you a Latin char.
You can switch between the two keyboards with Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-F2,
or reset with Ctrl-Alt-F12 (I think).
Cut and paste that text into Pluto.
Edit the message headers to say it's ISO-8859-5 not ISO-8859-1 (you might
have to do that in the outgoing mailspool)
Send it, and the recipient should get a correct message.
Theo
Paul Sprangers
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Type *Keyboard Russia and *Alphabet Cyrillic
[...]
> Edit the message headers to say it's ISO-8859-5 not ISO-8859-1 (you might
> have to do that in the outgoing mailspool)
Thank you very much for this comprehensive description.
I might give it a try, once, but to be honest, the number of actions
discourages me quite a bit. I think, I'll stick to the old way of composing
a letter in OvationPro, and attach it as PDF to a simple mail.
Kind regards,
Paul Sprangers
Michael Harding
EFF does a Cyrillic font, and with it the driver to convert easily
between that and a Latin font. Plus a Cyrillic keyboard layout if you
don't know which keys correspond.
It's many years since I last used it and I've forgotten how it worked,
but would that together with PDF do the job? (That's a question, not a
suggestion.)
Michael Harding
--
Rev. Preb. M. D. Harding mdha...@ormail.co.uk
Paul Sprangers
Michael Harding <mdha...@ormail.co.uk> wrote:
> EFF does a Cyrillic font, and with it the driver to convert easily
> between that and a Latin font. Plus a Cyrillic keyboard layout if you
> don't know which keys correspond.
{/proudly} That sounds as if they still provide my front end to their
module.
> It's many years since I last used it and I've forgotten how it worked,
> but would that together with PDF do the job? (That's a question, not a
> suggestion.)
Absolutely, and that's exactly the way I've always done it. (In pre-PDF
days, I used JPEG's of a screen snap instead.)
Nevertheless, it would be nice if we could directly type Russian into an
e-mail, or even better: if we could directly read e-mails that contain
Russian texts!
However, this won't work with EFF's excellent cyrillic type faces, because
such e-mails are quite probably composed with Unicode fonts, that need a
different encoding. Our mail programs unfortunately do not support other
encodings, unless you are prepared to reconfigure your computer quite
severely and edit the e-mail headers manually. After Theo Markettos'
explanation, I don't think that these things can be done with a simple
toggle, such as in mmm... Windows.
Kind regards,
Paul Sprangers
castlevarich
> In article <4fc16a5171mdhard...@ormail.co.uk>,
Dear Paul
I don’t know how much this helps, but I have
a version of a Cyrillic font that works from
the keyboard without any messing about
holding down the Alt key, etc. I use it to
create my own Russian dictionary in
Style.
I’ve also got another version that has all
the characters in the same position as KO18.
I’ve used to look at KO18-encoded web
pages in Fresco.
But I also have a copy of !CustomChr,
configured to allow you to enter these KO18
characters into something like Pluto by trying
with the mouse.
I don’t have Pluto (I don’t even have an
internet connection to my Acorn at home -
I use a PC in the library), but I am
guessing that you could use CustomChr
to type a short message into Pluto,
and attach a longer message as a
PDF file. You just need to make sure
that the mail header is the right one for
KO18 before you send it.
I always intended to write a text translation
program one day that will automatically
convert from my Cyrillic keyboard
font to KO18, so that you could create
the message in say Style on the keyboard,
drag the text file out and get it converted
to KO18 encoding, and then paste that into
an email program. Without the need to
type with the mouse.
But I’m probably not going to get around
to it until I retire . . .
If you let me have your direct email address,
I’ll send you the two fonts plus CustomChr
and you can have a go yourself.
Best wishes Jon Robinson