Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 08:01:25 +0100 (WET DST)
From: Laurent Siebenmann <sieben@cristal.math.u-psud.fr>
Message-Id: <200009070701.IAA04351@stats.math.u-psud.fr>
To: CyrTeX-en@vsu.ru, lcs@cristal.math.u-psud.fr, myke@mail.ru
Subject: Re: ASCII and Keyboards
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 Dear Michael Kolodin,
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 Thank you for your two replies of 19 August. I became
 aware of them only a few days back on visiting the
 archive:
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 https://info.vsu.ru/Lists/CyrTeX-en/List.html
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   << :) Alas, it [MS Win cp1251]  HAD variants, because
 \"E, \"e were sometimes place in different places. >>
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 Well, well, and your keyboard seems to be an example=20
 of that:
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  > cyrillic unshifted:...
  >
  > =A31234567890-=3D\
  > =CA=C3=D5=CB=C5=CE=C7=DB=DD=DA=C8=DF
  > =C6=D9=D7=C1=D0=D2=CF=CC=C4=D6=DC
  > =D1=DE=D3=CD=C9=D4=D8=C2=C0.
  >=20
  > cyrillic shifted:
  >=20
  > =B3!"?;%:?*()_+/
  > =EA=E3=F5=EB=E5=EE=E7=FB=FD=FA=E8=FF
  > =E6=F9=F7=E1=F0=F2=EF=EC=E4=F6=FC
  > =F1=FE=F3=ED=E9=F4=F8=E2=E0,
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  << (you need to have Cyrillic driver to read this, note:
 the same driver as I have :) >>
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 Let us test that.  Does my ASCII-Cyrillic utility
 correctly decodes your keyboard as:
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  > !cyrillic !unshifted:...
  >=20
  > !^^a31234567890-=3D\
  > KGXLEOZY'EQI'A
  > 'Z'WCBRTPMD'TH
  > S'UUNJFWVA.
  >
  > !cyrillic !shifted:
  >
  > !^^b3!"?;%:?*()_+/
  > kgxleozy'eqi'a
  > 'z'wcbrtpmd'th
  > s'uunjfwva,
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 It would seem that \"E=3D'O and \"e=3D'o are in TeX3
 notation the octets ^^a3 and ^^b3 which are exotic J and
 i respectively in the table for cp1251 that I posted, while
 \"E=3D'O and \"e=3D'o are are ^^a8 and ^^b8 in that table.
 Clearly some flexibility in en/de-coding is wanted!
 I hope TeX will be able to offer that for ASCII-Cyrillic.
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  > but in Cyrillic version the layout of chacarters differs
  > fro that is printed on the keys, I had to write
  > characters on the keys myself... :(
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 Ouch!.  But I mentioned that the French keyboard is a
 disaster for scientific users in several respects.
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 I am grateful for your spelling out the perfectly standard
 nature of Latin (=3DEnglish=3Dprogrammer) registers of your
 keyboard:
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 latin unshifted:
 `1234567890-=3D\
 qwertyuiop[]
 asdfghjkl;'
 zxcvbnm,./
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 latin shifted:
 ~!@#$%^&*()_+|
 QWERTYUIOP{}
 ASDFGHJKL:"
 ZXCVBNM<>?
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 That is the standard US keyboard offering excellent access
 to ASCII.  I once purchased a US keyboard for
 Macintosh and it is almost identical -- except that the
 key with TeX's backslash is at the end of the second row
 not the first. West European keyboards are not as good
 for programmers and TeX users!
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 I confess that I was toying with the idea of using ` in
 ASCII-Cyrillic where I currently use "!".  That would
 have placed all three escape characters ' ! \  of
 ASCII-Cyrillic on the unshifted register of the=20
 US keyboard.
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              Thanks again for your expos'e!
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                  Laurent Siebenmann
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