From: Petr Ovchenkov <ptr@ParallelGraphics.COM>
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Message-ID: <15327.45092.142113.841423@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 11:02:44 +0300
To: <CyrTeX-en@vsu.ru> (Cyrillic TeX Users Group)
Subject: Re: Russian PC Keyboard
In-Reply-To: <list-4111888@vsu.ru>
References: <list-4111888@vsu.ru>

>>>>> "SI" == sieben  <sieben@cristal.math.u-psud.fr> writes:

 SI> Such non-correspondence necessitates the engraving of both a
 SI> Cyrillic and a Latin character on each key. Since no Cyrillic
 SI> characters are engraved on the keyboards used in countries with
 SI> Latin script, my reaction has always been to fall back on the
 SI> intrinsic parallelism of the scripts.

Yeh, you partially right---I have a lot of problems while typing (in English!)
on Finnish and German keyboards. But this layouts convenient for native
language carriers.

 SI> It would be interesting to know whether use of this parallelism
 SI> on a Latin keyboard is more or less conducive to a foreigner
 SI> learning to type Russian Cyrillic than is a genuine Russian
 SI> keyboard!

The keybord layout in 'phonetical' correspondence with latin letters
was used on Videoton terminals (was made in Hungary) in EC computer series
(analog of IBM 360/370), and, sometimes, was on early PCs.

 SI> At any rate, Leif has chosen to use the Norwegian and *not* the
 SI> Russian keyboard, so a positive answer would be to his advantage!

By the way, the correspondence of keybord key to some letter is not
TeX/LaTeX property---this feature provided by software that switch
keyboard layout.


Best wishes,

   - ptr