3. Setting up the environment

Contents of this section




3.1  Console


All stuff needed for russification of the Linux console is contained
in the kbd package. The package is accessible at sunsite.unc.edu or
tsx-11.mit.edu. Usually, that package is already installed (it is a
standard part of at least Slackware distribution).
To setup the Cyrillic stuff, one should do three things:


Set the appropriate screen font. This is performed by the
setfont program. The fonts files are placed in
/usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts.

NOTE: Never run the setfont program under X or it will hang
your system. This is because it works with low-level video card calls
which X doesn't like.

If you use the font in Alt coding (as I do) then you have to set
up the screen mapping program to perform automatic conversion from Alt
to KOI-8. For that purpose use the mapscrn program and the
/usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/koi2alt file.

Load the appropriate keyboard layout with the loadkeys
program.

Output an ESC(K escape sequence on the screen (ESC
stands for the Escape character with code 033). Only God knows the
purpose of that combination. I stole it from the 
Danish-HOWTO
 (thanks, Thomas Petersen) and it works for me!


The following is an example of a script which sets up the Cyrillic
mode for console:

#!/bin/bash
#
# load cyrillic defs for console
#
# *** NEVER TRY IT UNDER X!!! ***

loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/ru.map
setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/Cyr_a8x16
mapscrn /usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/koi2alt
echo -ne 'ESC(K'        # use the REAL ESCAPE character here !
echo "Use the right Ctrl key to switch the mode..."





3.2  The X Window System


Like the console mode, the X environment also requires some
setup. This involves setting up the input mode and the X fonts. Both
are being discussed below.


The X fonts.


First of all, you have to obtain the fonts collection having the
Cyrillic glyphs at the appropriate places. 
There is a number of such fonts on the net. The author's favorite one
is the collection VakuFonts created by Serge Vakulenko
(vak@kiae.su). It can be found in the collection of 
cyrillic stuff for the X Window System
 where you can find many
useful packages for X.
Usually the X fonts are distributed in the BDF format which is
actually the textual font description. You should compile the fonts to
the PCF format using the bdftopcf command:


bdftopcf -o name.pcf name.bdf


It is also possible to compress the compiled font using the
compress program (I am not sure about the gzip support).
Now you should do three things to set everything up:


Put the compiled (and possibly compressed) fonts to the specified
directory. If that directory is not already known to the X server,
then you should make it known. To achieve that, add the following
commands to the xinitrc file (either local or global one):


xset +fp directory_with_fonts
xset fp rehash



Recreate the list of fonts for the directory. Simply cd to it and
run:


mkfontdir .



You should run it once. This will upgrade the the fonts catalog file
fonts.dir.

If the fonts package provides the file of fonts' aliases (usually
fonts.alias) then append it's contents to the fonts' aliases file in
the directory containing the fonts.


After you have made the settings above, you can check the availability
of the new fonts by running the following command:


xfd -fn fontname


This should show the table of characters of the specified font.


The input translation


The switching between the different input translations is set up by
the xmodmap program. This program allows customization of codes
emitted by various characters and their combinations. It sets the
things up based on the file containing the translation table, usually
named ~/.Xmodmap. If you want to create your own
table, refer to the xmodmap(1). However such tables are generally
supplied with the various X Cyrillic stuff packages. The good example
is the tables in the perfect package by Serge Vakulenko described
above.
Once you have such file containing the table, you should run the
command:


xmodmap filename


every time you start X. Modify your .xinitrc file to perform
it. NOTE: your .xinitrc can already contain the code to run the
xmodmap over your local table if the one exists.
The table distributed with the Serge's Vakulenko package didn't work
for the author. The following patch fixed the problem:

diff -u --new-file jcuken.xmm jcuken.xmm.mod
--- jcuken.xmm  Mon May 20 09:11:36 1991
+++ jcuken.xmm.mod      Sun Aug 13 15:44:06 1995
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 ! Cyrillic keyboard mapping table.
 ! Produced by Serge Vakulenko, , Moscow.
 !
+! Modified by Alexander L. Belikoff (abel@wisdom.weizmann.ac.il), 1995
+!
 ! Russian JCUKENG keyboard layout implemented. 
 ! Cyrillic characters are entered in koi8 encoding.
 !
@@ -10,7 +12,9 @@
 
 ! Use CapsLock as rus/lat switch key.
 remove lock = Caps_Lock
-add mod2 = Caps_Lock
+keysym Caps_Lock = Mode_switch
+add mod2 = Mode_switch
+add lock = Mode_switch
 
 !       Key             Base            Shift           Caps    ShiftCaps
 !------------------------------------------------------------------------


Now I can use the Caps Lock key to switch between normal and Cyrillic
input modes.
The author would appreciate the version of the table to support the
different mode switch key, say Alt or Control.
NOTE: The following is an excerpt from the list of new features
announced in the XFree 3.1.2:


Cyrillic fonts (using KIO8-R encoding) from Cronyx Ltd.


Unfortunately the author hasn't had a chance to check it yet.




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