Cyrillic Font

[ipaykov]

Anyone knows how to activate Cyrillic (or any other) font under Windows 98? Recently purchased a PC with Windows 98, followed the instructions, yet can not get it to work. Would be very much obliged.

[Lilly]

Did you add a language to your keyboard in Control Panel? Once you do that, you can click on the cyrillic font and presto! Also check your Fonts folder to see if you have cyrillic fonts. You can also paste cyrillic words in your wordprocessor, hi-light it, click on language i.e. russian, pick font and the gobbeldygook will transform into the font you chose. Sometimes you have to play around with the font of your choice. Russian fonts for example are numerous. Good Luck.

[ipaykov]

Lilly, thank you for your assistance. I did activate Language & Cyrillic font but when I try to type using "Russian", instead of legitimate characters the garbage comes out (english letters with some special characters above each letter). I must be missing something still. Thank you anyway for trying to help.

[Lilly]

You are on the right track. Next you have to click on your fonts (where you see Times New Roman, etc) and pick a russian cyrillic font, like i.e. ER Bukinist, K018, TL Cyrillic etc. You may have to download some fonts. There are some good websites that are safe to download them. Once you pick your font, along with having the Russian language selected, you can type. There are several types of Russian keyboards, so the letters may not be in the spots you are accustomed to. I found that the Windows keyboards are very limited.

I bought the software package called "Learn Russian Now" by Transparent and it is the finest product I have ever seen. I spent so much money on other products that just don't deliver what they promise.This package has keyboards in many many different cyrillic fonts, in any language that has cyrillic, and I just click on it and pick my keyboard and away I go. No mess no fuss. This package cost me $70 canadian and is the best buy. It has lessons, videos, accurate male and female voice pronounciation, read it in Russian and English as you go, see the meaning, allows you to make notes on the fly just by clicking. There is even a virtual tour of St. Petersburg, pictures, and all sorts of extras. There is so much more. Has many keboards too. It even comes with a Berlitz translator that translates German, Italian, French and Spanish. Why it doesn't come with Russian is the one question no one could answer.

I found a great website called "Prompt On-line Translator" that translates English to Russian and vice versa for FREE!
What I do sometimes is copy the translated text, paste in my Wordpefect document. I get the same gobbledygook as you did too. I first hi-lited the text, then I clicked on Rus as my language of choice, then I selected as my font 1251 cyrillic, or k018 etc. Instantly everything was changed to the right font.

Speaking of Translators
The piece of no good, garbage, pain in the #$%@&, kick myself for buying it software that cost me over a $100, was "Universal Translator Deluxe" by Language Force. It promises on the package all sorts of things, like translating web pages, emails, newspapers off the internet,instant translation in 33 languages and much much more. Ha! All you get is level one with the most basic word translation in Russian. There were so many simple words it can't translate. i.e. you, we, have, and many many more. Apparently Level 2 has what the box promised. You don't know until you read the manual that is in the box that you have to buy/upgrade to Level II. Well, if you have an additional $189 US you can. They send you a CD for Russian for another fee. I emailed "Language Force" many times. On the CD it says that if you click on the icon that is marked, you can get a free "Stargate". You get sent to a page on the internet that has a 401 Error etc. If you register on the internet, it says you get a free "Stargate" too. Guess what? Doesn't work. 401 error or something like that. I telephoned them, emailed them many times. All I got were more responses to buy their StarGate for $239 US, other upgrades and other add-ons for a fee.
This "Universal Translator Deluxe" comes with a voice control genie that pops out like some nightmare out of Ali Baba! He looks like blue Smurf.I need a translator just to understand what he is saying, and I have 15 years of computer experience and am somewhat computer savvy. All I ended up with is a translation device in which I have to manually input the words into the dictionary, and that takes time because I have to look everything up in my dictionary book and type in cyrillic to enter the word of choice in all the versions of the word. The only thing I find usefull is that I have 33 keyboards in languages like Russian, Vietnamese, Arabian, 4 versions of Chinese, Korean,3 versions of Japanese, Turkish, Swedish, Portugese, Polish Greek, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, Farsi (Farsi?)Hebrew, Arabic,Latin, etc. So if you want keyboards, that is one to try.

[This message has been edited by Lilly (edited 04 October 1999).]

[ipaykov]

YES! YES! YES! That is all I needed to do, Lilly, what would I do without you. Thank you tremendously, I can type in Russian in MS Works (I only see one font there in Cyrillic but that is better than none). Now I have to calm down and try to figure out how to do it in other environments (like right here), one step at a time. Thank you so much for taking time to provide me with additional information. When it comes to translation I am fine, I am a native Russian speaker, my name is Igor Paykov, by the way. I just wanted to be able to type documents in Russian and also send messages in Russian via Internet. I am getting there. Again, thank you a whole lot - ogromnoye spasibo.
Igor Paykov.

[Lilly]

I just checked the message board. I am glad to be of assistance. Pazhalusta moj druk.

You can download cyrillic fonts off the internet. One good site is Dr. Belin's Foreigh Font Archive at this site:
http://www.dtcc.edu/~berlin/fonts.html

Download it and copy the fonts to your Windows Fonts folder. If you still can't access the new fonts, try copying them to the MSWorks folder where the other True Type fonts are; they might be in the setup folder in MSWorks. You can see it by RIGHT-clicking your Start button on the bottom left corner of your desktop. Select Explorer and scroll down through Program Files until you see MSWorks or MSWorks 4.5 if you have it. Click on the little + sign to open the subfolders where you can search where the fonts are hidden. Usually though the Windows Fonts file holds all the fonts and programs access the fonts from that folder. I have MSWorks 4.5 and WordPerfect 8 too, but for WordPerfect, Corel has it's own folder for fonts.
You can download the fonts off the internet (many sites to choose from), they're free and to incorporate them into your Windows Fonts folder, go into Control Panel, Fonts, and follow the instructions to copy them over. It is best done this way and easy to follow.
I downloaded every imaginable cyrillic font. There are literally dozens to choose from. I especially like the script font.

More on this subject later. Dos vidanja.


[This message has been edited by Lilly (edited 16 October 1999).]

[Lilly]

Igor:
I just tried a couple of things.
I highlighted and copied some text from a Russian web site. I opened my MSWorks and pasted the text into it. It was all garbled, so I highlighted the text again, chose my ERBukinist, or Ko18-R for example and presto! I could read the russian text.
Next I copied this text into my browser mailbox. When I pasted it into my email, it was garbled again. I highlighted the text again.(Perhaps you don't even need to do that). Next I clicked on "View "(on the toolbar), scrolled down to "Encoding" and chose K018-R and I was able to see the russian text. When I clicked on "send" (I sent it to myself), I received it all garbled again. I did the "view", "encoding" and chose the cyrillic font, and was able to read it. I did something further too. I thought what would happen if I forwarded it back to me, and guess what? When I clicked on "get mail" it arrived intact with the encoding in place!

So the bottom line is, if you send email in the cyrillic font, the receiver on the other end must click on the cyrillic encoding. If you are sending it to Russia, I imagine that they will have the encoding set to cyrillic already. This is much cheaper than spending a fortune on useless, piece of s@%t software by LanguageForce that doesn't work properly.

I tried another thing too, I have the Accent Special Edition 2.0 that I bought for $30 and typed a message in Russian. I copied and pasted it in my email and sent it back to myself. Everything was intact and I didn't need to chage the view. Amazing! I imagine if you just type using the Russian keyboard that you set in your taskbar, you should not have any problem sending mail. Let me know if it works for you.

[This message has been edited by Lilly (edited 16 October 1999).]