[ THis is a reply to a letter from Laurent, which I think he had intended to the list, but which he only sent me and Vladimir. I think his letter was very interesting so I send my reply her also.]

Hi Laurent,
 [...]
>First purchase a Russian Mac Keyboard;
 [...]
>For each language switch you must do several things:
>
>  (a) change physical keyboards (switch drawers)
>  (b) switch between Norwegian and Russian keyboard
>interpretation software (KCHR resource) using the
>keyboard menu (at the right end of the Mac menu bar).

I have to ask you about the the physical keyboard switching. Why do you recommend that? Does it have any thing to do with technicalities? I am quite used to deal with russian and norwegian texts&problems. And I, as well as my wife (she is russian), only use Norwegian physical keyboard. For typing in russian we both use the Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard layout, which is standard on Apple's Cyrillic Language Kit. (My wife did not learn russian typewriting, allthough if we had a physical russian keyboard, she would perhaps preferred it.) With switch between writing system using the (b)-method. The biggest problem with this solution is that the Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard is in the ASCII-part only a US-keyboard. This means that e.g. the keys for punctuation and so on sits on a different location in the CYrillic QWERTY keyabord than in the NOrwegian keyboard. I have thought many times that I should find a way to create Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard modelled to fit the Norwegian keyboard layout instead. You mention it can be done with ResEdit (in your other post).

>  (c) type a language switching macro

For instance of this kind: \nortext <norwegian text in applemac 8-bit encoding> \rustext <russian text in maccyr 8-bit encoding>, as Vladimir showed?

>  (d) in the font menu switch between the Mac-Latin
>and Mac-Russian screen fonts.

This is *usually* taken care of automatically when switching Keyboard layout [see (b) above]. It happens in BBEdit now (as it supports UNICODE). But Alpha does not support it yet.

>VARIANT (1
>A real pro would be tempted to pay for some programming to
>condense steps (b),c),(d) into s single function key.

I agree. I use Nisus Writer 6.03 myself, and there is no problem automating this with NW. It is as simple as making a macro which change font and at the same time insert the language switching macro. Then the keyboard switching will follow automatically. One could also let the macro change keyboard instead. Then the font will also change. (Yes, it is possible to turn of the font/keyboard syncronisation.)

>VARIANT (2
>Another possible improvement of this "off-the-shelf" setup is
>to set aside the Norwegian keyboard and type Norwegian on the
>Russian keyboard in ASCII characters as Knuth's TeXbook
>recommends (the Russian Mac keyboard offers good access to
>ASCII but not to any latin accented characters).

This is just a matter of convenience... I know where the norwegian letters sits, mostly.

> This allows
>one to use Alpha with any single Mac-Russian encoded font. Steps
>(a),(b),(d) vanish.

Yes, I think it sounds pretty elegant. This would mean typing cyrillic in 8-bit and norwegian letters as macros (to use the langugage of Vladimir).

>I consider this variant optimal for a russist willing and
>able able to acquire a Macintosh Russian keyboard and
>accustomed to typing Norwegian in ASCII.
>
>But what about casual students of Russian in Norway who
>lack the resources to acquire a Russian keyboard? They will
>surely want to make do with their Norweigan Mac keyboard.
>I'll address that problem in another post explaining the
>solution I have devised.

But as I said above: it is possible with a Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard layout also, right?

I feel now more convinced than before that I can use my Nisus Writer for this...
--
leif