Russification

The term Russification once meant adopting the Russian language or some other Russian attribute by non-Russian communities. (Source: Wikipedia.) In the computer age, it means to be able to view and type in Russian on one's computer, including the abilities to read Web pages, send and receive e-mail, translate Russian documents into English and vice versa, and more.

This site once provided information on how to view Cyrillic in the different operating systems, but the last update was for Windows 98. Because of the advances in software, plus the huge number of other sites providing similar information, please use the links below if you cannot view Cyrillic on your PC or MAC. Sadly, some of these sites have not been updated for a long time either. Good luck!

Guidance

Computer Russification. A Wikipedia article with some very good information.

Enable cyrillic within LaTeX. Instructions from the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford.

Friends and Partners' Cyrillic Text Site This page is offered to help the viewer obtain information about Cyrillic fonts and how to install them on any computer.

Full Russification of Windows Operating Systems. Up to and including Windows Vista.

Internationalization/Russification of CKM Linux cluster. For those who dislike both PCs and MACs (possibly also works with Unix).

Russian Fonts. Configuring Your Computer to Read and Write in Russian

Russification of your computer. Includes links for both PC and MAC.

Russification of the Macintosh

Russification of MUSes. Russification X Windows applications..

Russification page. Another older site with good background instructions.

Russify Everything At Vadim Maslov's

SovInformBureau. Here you can find detailed and yet simple instructions on how to make your favorite software work with cyrillic.

Slovo. How to make your PC write in Slavic, Cyrillic and East Central European languages. Some information is available in German language only.

Tips on viewing Cyrillic text. From the U.S. Library of Congress.

Encodings

About Unicode and Cyrillic. From Dalhousie University.
Convert Cyrillic.com. Russian font scheme conversion and more. The first site, that in addition to the usual encodings, allows one to convert from and to ALA-LC Romanization (Library of Congress with Diacritics)
The Cyrillic Charset Soup. Even though ISO 8859 contains a standard Cyrillic character set, there is a whole bunch of other Cyrillic encodings being used on computers worldwide. This page tries to explain why that is so by providing a historical survey. Each character set is illustrated by a bit map GIF along with the underlying Unicode mapping table and BDF (X/Unix) font.
Cyrillic in Different Encodings. At least 10 encodings cited.
ISO/IEC 8859-5:1999 Latin/Cyrillic Alphabet.
Modified Library of Congress Cyrillic Encoding. Optimized for ASCII-based interfaces, such as HTML forms text input fields.
UCS generic collation locale -- rationale for Cyrillic This page, now available in English in what at first appears to be a Dutch language page, provides information regarding the ordering of the Cyrillic characters given in ISO 14651. Scroll down a few lines for the rationale.
Windows standard encoding for Cyrillic

Fonts

If a font you download does not show up after you install it in Windows XP (and, I suppose, Vista), do this: Open Control Panel and click on "Fonts." Right click on the font you just installed and click "Properties." Near the bottom of that window (in Windows XP, at least) it will tell you it may not be safe. Click the box to allow you to use it. It should appear now in Word or other software applications.

Cyrillic Fonts on the Internet is a good starting place for fonts.

Da Font

Font2U

FontSpace

Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov's home page. Cyrillic raster fonts for X-Windows and DosEmu.

Fonts and reading Cyrillic text

Luc Devroye's page on Cyrillic typography Links to dozens of sites for hundreds of Cyrillic fonts.

Paratype, a commercial site. Free fonts have been moved to this link. The English language part of the site is at this link.

REESWeb : Russian and East European Studies Internet Resources Software Resources Search for "fonts" (without quotes) to find resources for locating fonts and other computer software for various computer platforms.

Search Free Fonts claims to offer one of the largest, if not the largest, collection of fonts on the Web.

Keyboard Drivers

Cyrillic-English Keyboard Driver. Must be paid for. Quite frankly, I have no idea why someone would pay for a driver today (2018).
Fingertip Software. Fingertip Software is no longer in business, but you still can download their programs if you need to re-install them. You must already have the code to reactivate them.
Janko's Keyboard Generator. This program generates .KBD files for Windows 95, 98 and ME. It is now in the public domain and free.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. Design your own keyboard layout. This is the program I use. It allows users to place letters anywhere on the keyboard if they don't like the "fonetic" or "Russian" layouts. Be certain to read the directions, other wise you will go nuts installing the layout.
Microsoft Language Bar Supporting Information. It explains how to enable your keyboard for different languages. I use their Language Bar, shifting between Latin and Cyrillic, not just Microsoft Office programs, in any application very easily. Used with the creator program immediately above.
Russify MS DOS. If you must...
Russify Your PC
SofTecDesign Cyrillic-English Keyboard Driver. Free to try, $22.00 to buy.
Winsite. This site offers a number of downloads as well as patches for Microsoft problems.

Other Software

The Abbyy OCR program, FineReader OCR for Cyrillic is available from this commercial site
The Speaking Clock web site. Much different from the older version, which I still use and has a plug-in that will announce the time for you, in Russian, as often as you want.

Links last updated and checked on 19 June 2012