Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 07:19:07 GMT
Message-Id: <200111020719.fA27J7609920@beryl.math.u-psud.fr>
From: sieben@cristal.math.u-psud.fr
To: CyrTeX-en@vsu.ru
Subject: Apple's Cyrillic Kit


This is again Macintosh based.


Leif wrote:

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

I replied:

> As explained elsewhere, if this means the Mac KCHR resource for Russia,
> then it will give satisfactory service *only* if you suitably label 33
> or more physical keys. Even then it will be "hunt-and-peck" for a long
> time. The labeling is painful enough that it has not been a "done
> thing" for decades. But send this "Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard layout" to
> me so I can be sure I understand.

Well I guessed wrong!!!!!!!!!

Leif has just sent me three small keyboard configuration
resources (type KCHR) that
I understand come from a Cyrillic Kit delivered with
some or all MacOS 9 versions (so from about 1999 on).

  Cyrillic-QWERTY
  Cyrillique-AZERTY
  Kyrillisch-QWERTZ

These are NOT for a Cyrillic physical keyboard but rather
for the three main species of Latin script physical
keyboards as examplified by: the USA QWERTY, the French
AZERTY and the German QWERTZ keyboard.

This is a nice piece of work by Apple Inc.
The ruling ideas seem to be to use intrinsic parallelism
between ASCII and Cyrillic letters. More precisely: 

(1) place most Russian Cyrillic letters on the key of a
nearest ASCII letter.

(2) place remaining Cyrillic letters as "nearby" as
possible, preferably using no modifier keys, and
certainly using no "dead-keys".

This requires use of the Mac Cyrillic 8-bit encoding, whose
content is very similar to the Windows 8-bit encoding. Each is
suitable for typing Russian and perhaps also Ukrainian and
so on.  Each excludes all access to Latin letters; it is
exclusively Cryillic.  Hence bilingual Latin&Cyrillic typing
will require KCHR switching, and also font switching if any
non-ASCII Latin letters are required.

I imagine that Apple Inc. hopes that, for every Latin
language physical keyboard, and in particular the
Norwegian, one of these three KCHR resources is going to be
very suitable for typing Russian (and Ukrainian and ...).
If not, it is certain that ResEdit offers an excellent way
to adapt it. (And maybe such adaptations will be included in
leter Mac System releases;=)

Here is a somewhat hazy view of the parallelism that makes the
Cyrillic-QWERTY Keyboard ergonomic.  (Take the following with a
grain of salt I am using a French System and keyboard and
trying to record what I would see on a USA System.)

As usual, I denote the 26 ASCII letters by:

             !a !b !c ... !z 

and the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet by:

     a b v g d e 'o 'z z i j k l m n o p r
       s t u f x 't 'c w 'w q y h 'e 'u 'a    

Cyrillic - USA/QWERTY correspondence

1-st row:
 'a - !q  w - !w  e - !e  r - !r  t - !t  y - !y 
            u - !u  i - !i  o - !o  p - !p   
2-d row: 
a - !a  s - !s  d - !d  f - !f  g - !g  'c - !h 
            j - !j  k - !k  l - !l  
3-d row: 
'z - !z  x - !x  't - !c  v - !v  b - !b  n - !n 
             m - !m  


Comments:

(a)   Apple's \cyrya - q   is about as good or bad as
the ASCII-Cyrillic  \sftsn - q .


(b) The dissonances/exclusions I see are: 

     \cyryu - [ 
     \cyrzh - ]
     \sftsn - -
     \sftsn - =


(c) I cannot see what is going on with
\cyrerev and \cyrshch (due to my french system); maybe
\ and < are the keys-- which would be "dissonant".


In summary I am now betting that Leif's problems are almost
over:- After at most a bit of tuning with ResEdit, Apple's
Cyrillic-QWERTY KCHR should offer Leif reasonable satisfaction
in Norwegian-Russian bilingual TeX typing with absolutely no
help from my similar but different private software. 

Cheers

Laurent S.