It seems like Macintosh users are left out! For the longest time I was trying to make some sense out of encodings used to represent Russian text and then figure out a way to work with it on a Macintosh. And for the longest time I could not find any answers... The information collected on this site comes from about four years of searching and experimenting, often without any success. But, as the Russian proverb goes, "He who is searching will always find."

The Internet is developing into a tool for global communication at an explosive pace. In attempting to communicate across geographic borders, however, we run into a language barrier. What do people do when they need to communicate in a foreign language? We study it. Well, we just have to "teach" the computer a new language to be able to communicate. In our case, this language happens to be Russian. Actually, to be more precise, this information can be easily applicable to any language based on the Cyrillic alphabet, such as Belarussian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian. To this extent, the terms Russian and Cyrillic are going to be used almost interchangeably.

My goals for this guide are:
  • Enable Macintosh (MacOSTM) computers to work with Cyrillic text by providing necessary System resources such as fonts, language scripts and keyboard layouts.
  • Provide information and instructions for properly configuring compatible applications (clients for Internet services such as WWW and e-mail, wordprocessing applications, etc.) to work with Cyrillic text.
  • In trying to achieve the above goals, limit the scope of the software recommended and reviewed to non-commercial free- and/or shareware as much as possible.

A few words on the organization of the information on this site. In an effort to maximize the accessibility and easy navigation of the information, and to minimize the amount of e-mail received as a consequence of people missing the information that's already here, the overall layout of the Third edition of the server has been reorganized. Navigation is provided through a clickable image at the bottom of the screen. If you are using a text-only browser, you can still navigate this site by using the text links provided on the Main page. Information on russifying the most popular applications (Netscape Navigator, Eudora and a wordprocessor) is found in a streamlined Cyrillic Express! section. The main guide is built around the four Easy Steps which have to be followed one by one in order to achieve the goals of properly configuring one's system to work with Cyrillic text. You can see the overview of the server on the Table of Contents page.

Finally, the Contact Information page of this server is your source on how to ask questions pertaining to this site, get in touch and learn more about the author, and find out about additional services offered.

Special Thanks for being very instrumental in providing advice and information used in this server:

Greg Cole
Andreas Prilop
Adarsh Bhat adbst12+@pitt.edu
Dmitri Kuznetsov vdm@decwa.ece.uiuc.edu
Serge Viznyuk VIZNYUK@MPS.OHIO-STATE.EDU
Casey Palowitch
Mikhail Fridberg fridberg@pfc.mit.edu
Daniel A. Chirkov Daniel_Chirkov@fourd.com

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