Cyrillic Character Sets in Kermit 95

Contents

The Cyrillic character sets known to Kermit 95 are: 

  Kermit Name    Type   Description
   CYRILLIC-ISO  8-bit    ISO 8859-5 Latin/Cyrillic, also called "New KOI8"
   KOI8          8-bit    USSR Standard GOST 19768-76 ("Old KOI8")
   KOI8R         8-bit    A new version of KOI used in Russia
   KOI8U         8-bit    A new version of KOI used in the Ukraine
   KOI7          7-bit    ASCII with lowercase letters replaced by Cyrillic
   CP855         8-bit    Cyrillic PC Code Page
   BULGARIA-PC   8-bit    Cyrillic PC Code Page used in Bulgaria
   CP866         8-bit    Cyrillic PC Code Page used in former Soviet Union
   CP1251        8-bit    Cyrillic Code Page for Windows

KOI8 is the character set most widely used in newsgroups and email, but KOI8R and KOI8U are becoming more popular since the breakup of the Soviet Union. CP1251 is sometimes seen in newsgroups -- its encoding is partly the same as ISO Latin/Cyrillic, partly different, plus it includes some graphic characters in the C1 control area.

ISO Latin/Cyrilic, CP855, and CP1251 include the Cyrillic letters needed for modern Belorussian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian. KOI8U includes the characters needed for Ukrainian. The others contain only the Cyrillic characters used in modern Russian orthography. KOI-7 contains only uppercase Roman and Cyrillic letters.

Cyrillic File Transfer

This is described fully in Using C-Kermit (both 1st and 2nd editions).

Cyrillic Terminal Emulation

Kermit 95 can be used to display Cyrillic text from the host if you have a Cyrillic font or code page on your PC, but the conditions under which you may send Cyrillic letters from your keyboard depend on the specific operating system.

Windows 95/98/ME

In Windows 9x and ME, Cyrillic terminal is possible if you have a Cyrillic code page, CP855, BULGARIA-PC (known in Bulgaria itself, erroneously, as CP856), or CP866 loaded on your PC. However, it is not likely that you have one of these code pages, or can have it, unless you have installed a Cyrillic version of Windows; see the Kermit 95 Bug List for more information about this. As noted, BULGARIA-PC and CP866 are sufficient only for modern Russian; CP855, though not widely used, includes the additional characters needed for Ukrainian, Belorussion, etc.

Windows NT/2000/XP

The Windows NT family, unlike Windows 9x/NT, supports Unicode in a Console window. You should be using Lucida Console as your font, in which case you'll always have Cyrillic terminal emulation available. Lucida Console also has a wider selection of Cyrillic letters, at least the full repertoire of ISO 8859-5, which, as noted, is sufficient for Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Macedonian, Serbocroatian, and Ukrainian, as well as Russian, and possibly also pre-1918 Russian and maybe other, more archaic forms.

Also unlike Windows 9x/ME, Windows NT/2000/XP allows the application to set the Code Page to be used for delivering keystrokes. The code page may be set in Kermit 95 with the: SET TERMINAL CODE-PAGE code-page

command. code-page could be replaced with either CP866 or CP1251 or any other code page available on your system. Use SHOW CHARACTER-SETS to view a list of available code pages.

The SET TERMINAL LOCAL-CHARACTER-SET command must be used to set the local character-set to the code page that was set with SET TERMINAL CODE-PAGE. Otherwise, keyboard to host translation will not properly work.

OS/2

The OS/2 version of Kermit 95 comes with a Cyrillic "PC font" equivalent to Code Page 866, that you can load if you don't have a Russian version of OS/2. You can use this in fullscreen sessions only -- NOT in an OS/2 Window, and even then it works only if your video driver allows it. In Kermit/2, the command: 

  SET TERMINAL CODE-PAGE 866

actually attempts to load the Cyrillic CP866 font into your video adapter (this can't be done in Windows 95 or Windows 98).

Configuring K95 for Cyrillic Terminal Emulation

Use the following commands to enable Cyrillic terminal emulation in Kermit 95: 

  SET TERMINAL TYPE VT220     ; (or other desired terminal type)
  SET TERMINAL LOCAL-CHARACTER-SET { CP855, BULGARIA-PC, CP866, CP1251 }
  SET TERMINAL REMOTE-CHARACTER-SET -
   { CYRILLIC-ISO, KOI8, KOI8R, KOI8R, SHORT-KOI, CP855, CP856, CP866, CP1251 }
  SET TERMINAL BYTESIZE 8     ; Not needed for Short-KOI

Check your Kermit 95 character-set selection with SHOW CHARACTER-SETS.

The Local Character Set (Windows 95/98 Only)

At the DOS prompt, type "CHCP" to see what Windows think your Console Code page is. If it reports CP866 or BULGARIA-PC correctly, then you don't need to give a SET TERMINAL LOCAL-CHARACTER-SET, since Kermit 95 will find this out by itself. Otherwise, tell Kermit to: 

  SET TERMINAL LOCAL-CHARACTER-SET CP866 ; (or CP855, or CP866)

to let K95 know what the Console window is using, since in this case Windows will not report it correctly to Kermit. You should only specify the one that is actually used in your Console window. Windows does not give Kermit any ability to change it.

The Remote Character Set

Choose the remote character set that is appropriate for the host or service you are connecting to. If you are using an 8-bit remote character set (i.e. any Cyrillic set except SHORT-KOI), you must also make sure that the remote host and the connection itself are set up for 8 data bits, no parity. Examples: 

  stty pass8               (Some UNIX)
  stty -parenb             (Some other UNIX)
  stty -evenp -oddp        (Maybe another UNIX)
  stty cs8                 (Another UNIX)
  stty -istrip             (And another UNIX)
  char/on/8bt              (AOS/VS)
  set terminal /eightbit   (VMS)

Some of the UNIX stty options might need to be used in combination, e.g.: 

  stty cs8 -istrip         (for example, on HP-UX 10.20)

If you are going through a terminal server or other intermediate device, it too might need to be commanded into 8-bit transparency.

Entering Cyrillic Characters on the Keyboard

In Windows it is possible to install more than one keyboard layout in the Keyboard Control Panel on the Input Locales page. When more than one Input Locale/Layout combination is defined, you are required to choose one of them as the default, and to choose a key combination (such as Left Alt + Shift) to switch among them. This is called the Switch-Locale key sequence. The default Input-Locale is the Input-Locale that each Window uses when it is opened.

For instance, it is possible to install: 

  Input Locale                                  Layout
  ------------------------------------------    ---------------
  English (United States)                       US
  Russian                                       Russian

with "English (United States)" as the default input locale and a Switch-Locale key sequence of "Left_Alt+Shift". Since the keyboard only has one alphabet on it, this "alphabet shift" key is needed to switch between the two defined alphabets. In Russian Windows, for example, it is necessary to type Roman letters when you type Windows file names or Kermit 95 commands and Cyrillic letters when writing in the Russian language.

Although the behavior is supposed to be the same on Windows 95/98/ME and Windows NT/2000/XP, it turns out that it is not.

Keyboard Shifting in Windows NT/2000/XP

In Windows NT/2000/XP, you can give the following commands to Kermit 95: 

  SET TERMINAL CODE-PAGE 1251
  SET TERMINAL LOCAL-CHARACTER-SET CP1251
  SET TERMINAL REMOTE-CHARACTER-SET CP866

When the current locale is "English (United States)" K95 receives Roman characters from the keyboard. When the current locale is "Russian" K95 receives Cyrillic characters from the keyboard. To toggle between the two, press the Switch-Locale key sequence.

When issuing commands to K95 switch to the "English" locale and when sending Cyrillic characters to the host switch to the "Russian" locale. There is no limitation to mixing Roman and Cyrillic characters via this method at the K95 command prompt or in terminal mode.

Note that only characters that are in the active code page may be delivered to K95 from the keyboard. In the above example code page 1251 is used because it is available on all versions of NT and it contains all of the Roman characters needed for U.S. English and the Cyrillic characters used by CP866. (CP866 is not available on the U.S. version of NT but may be available on some international versions.)

Windows 95/98/ME

When using Windows 9x/ME, locale switching does not work properly in 32-bit console applications so Kermit 95 has to simulate the switching of keyboard layouts. The Russian Windows 95 uses CP866 as its default code page for the DOS and Windows-32 Console environments. Therefore, both Roman and Cyrillic characters are available for display.

For 16-bit DOS applications the current locale is ignored. All keystrokes generate Roman letters regardless of what locales are installed.

In Windows 9x, both Left Alt-Shift and Ctrl-Shift are "hotkeys" that toggle the Keyboard Input-Locale among those installed. When K95 is started it uses the Default Input-Locale as set in the Keyboard Control Panel, and then you can change to another input locale with the hotkeys.

When K95 starts it will auto-detect CP866 as the code page and configure the Local Character-set to the same value.

Using Kermit 95's Russian Keyboard Mode

If you have a font with Cyrillic characters, but lack a Cyrillic keyboard and driver, you can use Kermit 95's built-in Russian keyboard mode (it is called "Russian" because only the letters of the modern Russian alphabet are handled, due to lack of knowledge about where to put other Cyrillic letters such as Dje, Gje, Lje, Kje, Kze, Nje, I, Yi, Je, Ie, Tshe, etc -- or for that matter, lack of enough keys on Roman keyboards to accommodate them):

Of course you can assign these verbs to any other keys of your choice: 

  SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN \368 \KkbRussian  ; F1 enters Russian keyboard mode
  SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN \369 \KkbEnglish  ; F2 enters English keyboard mode

The default Cyrillic key layout follows the one used by Microsoft Russian DOS and throughout the former USSR. The names of the Cyrillic letters are from the ISO 8859-5 Standard. The following table shows the key assignments when the keyboard is in Russian mode. If you do not like them, you can use the SET TERMINAL KEY command (new to Kermit 95 1.1.8) to create your own layout. The "code" is the CP866 value, which applies no matter what the remote terminal character set is (Kermit will translate). 

US key   Scan   Russian    CP866  Equivalent SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN command
  `       96    io          241   SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN  \96 \241
  ~      126    Io          240   SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN \126 \240
  @       64    "            34   etc...
  #       35    No          252   (Numero sign)
  $       36    %            37
  ^       94    :            58
  q      113    i-kratkoye  169   (Lowercase Short i)
  Q       81    I-Kratkoye  137   (Uppercase Short I)
  w      119    tse         230
  W       87    Tse         150
  e      101    u           227
  E       69    U           147
  r      114    ka          170
  R       82    Ka          138
  t      116    ie          165
  T       84    Ie          133
  y      121    en          173
  Y       89    En          141
  u      117    ghe         163
  U       85    Ghe         131
  i      105    sha         232
  I       73    Sha         152
  o      111    shcha       233  (See Note 1)
  O       79    Shcha       153  (See Note 1)
  p      112    ze          167
  P       80    Ze          135
  [       91    ha          229
  {      123    Ha          149
  ]       93    hard sign   234  (See Note 2)
  }      125    Hard Sign   154  (See Note 2)
  \       92    /            47
  a       97    ef          228
  A       65    Ef          148
  s      115    yeri        235
  S       83    Yeri        155
  d      100    ve          162
  D       68    Ve          130
  f      102    a           160
  F       70    A           128
  g      103    pe          175
  G       71    Pe          143
  h      104    er          224
  H       72    Er          144
  j      106    o           174
  J       74    O           142
  k      107    el          171
  K       75    El          139
  l      108    de          164
  L       76    De          132
  ;       59    e           237
  :       58    E           157
  z      122    ya          239
  Z       90    Ya          159
  x      120    che         231
  X       88    Che         151
  c       99    es          225
  C       67    Es          145
  v      118    em          172
  V       86    Em          140
  b       98    i           168
  B       66    I           136
  n      110    te          226
  N       78    Te          146
  m      109    soft sign   236
  M       77    Soft Sign   156
  ,       44    be          161
  <       60    Be          129
  .       46    yu          238
  >       62    Yu          158
  /       47    .            46
  ?       63    ,            44

Note 1:
On Belorussian keyboards, upper and lowercase letter shcha is replaced by upper and lowercase Cyrillic letter I (the one that looks just like a Roman I, not the one that looks like a reverse Roman N). This letter does not exist in code page 866, but you can substitute Roman letter I if desired.

Note 2:
On Belorussian keyboards, upper and lowercase hard sign is replaced by upper and lowercase Belorussian letter Short U: 

  SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN  \93 \247  ; Map ] to lowercase Short u
  SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN \125 \246  ; Map } to uppercase Short U

On Ukrainian keyboards, these same keys are mapped to Ukrainian letter Yi (looks like Roman I with two dots instead of one): 

  SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN  \93 \244  ; Map ] to lowercase yi
  SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN \125 \245  ; Map } to uppercase Yi

See Table VIII-6 in Using C-Kermit pp.470-473 for complete Cyrillic character-set listings for ISO 8859-5, CP866, KOI-8, and Short KOI.

To define your own Cyrillic key map, create a file containing the desired SET TERM KEY RUSSIAN commands, in which the assigned values are CP866 values. TAKE this file (or enter its name in the Dialer entry, Keyboard page, Key map "Read from File" box), and then whenever you execute the \KkbRussian verb, your keyboard will have the mappings defined in this file.

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