How to help your computer read and write Russian

(by Bratan - www.podarok.net )

Chapter III - Typing in Russian (Windows 95/98 )

III. Typing in Russian

 

Windows 95/98 has a really crappy native support for typing in russian. If you have some kind of 3rd party russification application use it instead.

You will need:

Please follow these instructions:

  1. First you need to enable cyrillic support. Please follow "Reading in Russian" tutorial for Win95/98/ME.

  2. Now go to START- SETTINGS - CONTROL PANEL

  3. Make keyboard state visible by going to Keyboard ->Language and checking Enable indicator on taskbar.

  4. Now you can change character set that your keyboard generates by pushing LeftAlt+Shift or by left-clicking on En/Ru indicator on taskbar.

  5. This is a good time to check how your cyrillic support works. Open the WordPad application, switch keyboard into Russian state and start typing something. If you see cyrillic letters, then cyrillic support is installed and works properly.

  6. You installed JTsUKENG keyboard layout -- the one that is used on Russian typewriters. Many people, including me, like Phonetic or YaWERTY keyboard layout in which cyrillic 'A' sits on the same key as latin 'A', cyrillic '.' sits on the same key as latin '.', and so on.
  7. To install this layout, download file kbdru-ph.kbd and save it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.
  8. Backup your original Windows cyrillic keyboard file (kbdru.kbd), and replace it with downloaded file by executing these commands from MS DOS prompt:

    copy kbdru.kbd kbdru-st.kbd
    copy kbdru-ph.kbd kbdru.kbd

  9. Close all applications and reboot your machine. After rebooting your standard Russian keyboard will become a phonetic keyboard, just like the one shown above.
    The exact layout of keys on Yawerty keyboard is shown here.
    Test the new keyboard by opening a new file in WordPad and typing to it in Russian keyboard mode.

Back to main page