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.
First of all, you have to obtain the fonts having the Cyrillic glyphs at the appropriate positions.
If you are using the most recent X (or XFree86) distribution, chances are, that you already have such fonts. In the late 1995, the X Window System incorporated a set of Cyrillic fonts, created by Cronyx. Ask your system administrator, or, if you are the one, check your system, namely:
xlsfonts | grep koi8'. If there are fonts listed, your
X server is already aware about the fonts.
find -name crox\*.pcf\*to find the location of the Cyrillic fonts in the system. You'll have to
enable those fonts to the X server, as I explain below.
If you haven't found such fonts installed, you'll have to do it yourself.
There is some ambiguity with the fonts. XFree86 docs claim that the
russian fonts collection included in the distribution is developed by
Cronyx. Nevertheless, you may find another set of Cronyx Cyrillic
fonts on the net (eg. on
ftp.kiae.su), known as the xrus package (don't confuse it
with the xrus program, which is used to setup a Cyrillic keyboard
layout. Hopefully, tha letter one was renamed to xruskb
recently). Xrus has fewer fonts than the collection in Xfree86
(38 vs 68), but the latter one didn't go along with my
Netscape setup - it gave me some really huge
font in the menubar. The xrus package doesn't have this problem.
I would suggest you to download and try both of them. Pick up the one which you'll like more. Also, I'm going to creat RPM packages soon for both collections and download them both to ftp.redhat.com and to my FTP site.
There are also older stuff, for example the vakufonts package, created by Serge Vakulenko, which was the base for the one in the X distribution. There are also a number of others. The important point is that the fonts' names in the old collection were not strictly conforming to the standard. The latter is fine in general, but sometimes it may cause various weird errors. For example, I had a bad experience with Maple V for Linux, which crashed mysteriously with the vakufonts package, but ran smoothly with the "standard" ones.
So, let's start with the fonts:
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic for a system-wide setup, or just
create a private directory for personal use.
*.bdf files), you have to
compile them. For each font do:
bdftopcf -o <font>.pcf <font>.bdfIf your server supports compressed fonts, do it, using the compress program:
compress *.pcfAlso, if you do want to put the new fonts to an already existing font directory. you have to concatenate the old and the new files named
fonts.alias in the case both of them exist.
fonts.dir. You don't have to create this
list manually. Instead, do:
cd <new font directory> mkfontdir .
XF86Config. To find the location of this file, see output of
startx. Also, see XF86Config(4/5) for details.
xinit. Add the new directory to
the xinit startup file. See xinit(1x) and the next option
for details.
~/.xinitrc (or ~/.Xclients, or ~/.xsession
for the RedHat users). Add the following commands to it:xset +fp <new font directory> xset fp rehash
In order to make the X clients use the Cyrillic fonts, you have to set
up the appropriate X resources. For example, I make the russian font
the default one in my ~/.Xdefaults:
*font: 6x13
Since my cyrillic fonts are first in the font path (see output of
'xset q'), the font above is taken from the "cyrillic" directory.
This just a simple case. If you want to set the appropriate part of the X client to a cyrillic font, you have to figure out the name of the resource (eg. using editres(1x)) and to specify it either in the resource database, or in the command line. Here go some examples:
$ xterm -font '-cronyx-*-bold-*-*-*-19-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
...will run xterm with some ugly font; and
$ xfontsel -xrm '*quitButton.font: -*-times-*-*-*-*-13-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-*'
...will set a Cyrillic Times font for the Quit button in
xfontsel.
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.
If you don't want to deal with all these tricks and you prefer having a solution right away, either download an appropriate xmodmap table, available at many sites dealing with the Cyrillic, for example, ftp.kiae.su or ftp.funet.fi. Also, I made the table, described below, available at my FTP site.
More convenient alternative is to install the
xruskb package, which
allows you to configure most of the input translation parameters
without having to know about xmodmap.
The following is a simplified description of input customization. If you want to do more sophisticated tricks, refer to the xmodmap(1) or, even better, wait for the next major X release, which will hopefully address the current input problems.
In our case, the translation table should define two things:
This is basically a sequence of directives which assign the certain keysyms to a specified keycodes. The general syntax is the following:
keycodecode=sym1 sym2 sym3 sym4
where code is the numerical code of the given key on the keyboard
(refer to the standard table for your system. In my case it is stored
in the file /usr/lib/X11/etc/xmodmap.std). The syms
define the keysyms emitted by that key in different
conditions. Sym1 is the keysym emitted by the key in a regular
state, sym2 corresponds the key
in shifted state (usually when Shift is held down). Sym3
and sym4 define the keysyms emitted when the Mode_switch is
active for the normal and shifted states respectively (group 2,
according to the X Protocol Specification). In our case,
the active Mode_switch corresponds to the Cyrillic input mode.
These should be either hexadecimal codes or the symbolic constants
from /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h (without leading "XK_").
Thus, if we wanted the key corresponding to the Latin 'a' generate the Russian 'a' in the alternative mode, we would write the following:
keycode 38 = a A 0xC1 0xE1
The reader might be curious why I don't use the Cyrillic_a and
Cyrillic_A constants respectively. The answer is that it didn't
work for me. I am not very familiar with the guts of the X Window
System specification, but I've got the following explanation. The
symbolic constants above have the values 0x6C1 and 0x6E1
respectively. This means that in really multi-lingual environment they
could be successfully used without overlapping with any other
character set. However the KOI-8 standard is not well suited for such
environment. Thus, since we want to retain compatible with the past,
we will violate the rules of multi-lingual support in the X Window
System.
The following is a table for the most popular russian JCUKEN keyboard
layout (these tables are derived from the ones in the vakufonts
package):
keysym 4 = 4 dollar 4 quotedbl keysym 5 = 5 percent 5 colon keysym 6 = 6 asciicircum 6 comma keysym 7 = 7 ampersand 7 period keysym q = q Q 0xCA 0xEA keysym w = w W 0xC3 0xE3 keysym e = e E 0xD5 0xF5 keysym r = r R 0xCB 0xEB keysym t = t T 0xC5 0xE5 keysym y = y Y 0xCE 0xEE keysym u = u U 0xC7 0xE7 keysym i = i I 0xDB 0xFB keysym o = o O 0xDD 0xFD keysym p = p P 0xDA 0xFA keysym bracketleft = bracketleft braceleft 0xC8 0xE8 keysym bracketright = bracketright braceright 0xDF 0xFF keysym a = a A 0xC6 0xE6 keysym s = s S 0xD9 0xF9 keysym d = d D 0xD7 0xF7 keysym f = f F 0xC1 0xE1 keysym g = g G 0xD0 0xF0 keysym h = h H 0xD2 0xF2 keysym j = j J 0xCF 0xEF keysym k = k K 0xCC 0xEC keysym l = l L 0xC4 0xE4 keysym semicolon = semicolon colon 0xD6 0xF6 keysym apostrophe = apostrophe quotedbl 0xDC 0xFC keysym grave = grave asciitilde 0xA3 0xB3 keysym z = z Z 0xD1 0xF1 keysym x = x X 0xDE 0xFE keysym c = c C 0xD3 0xF3 keysym v = v V 0xCD 0xED keysym b = b B 0xC9 0xE9 keysym n = n N 0xD4 0xF4 keysym m = m M 0xD8 0xF8 keysym comma = comma less 0xC2 0xE2 keysym period = period greater 0xC0 0xE0
Also, for those using the russian YAWERTY layout, I include the following table:
keysym q = q Q 0xD1 0xF1 keysym w = w W 0xD7 0xF7 keysym e = e E 0xC5 0xE5 keysym r = r R 0xD2 0xF2 keysym t = t T 0xD4 0xF4 keysym y = y Y 0xD9 0xF9 keysym u = u U 0xD5 0xF5 keysym i = i I 0xC9 0xE9 keysym o = o O 0xCF 0xEF keysym p = p P 0xD0 0xF0 keysym bracketleft = bracketleft braceleft 0xDB 0xFB keysym bracketright = bracketright braceright 0xDD 0xFD keysym a = a A 0xC1 0xE1 keysym s = s S 0xD3 0xF3 keysym d = d D 0xC4 0xE4 keysym f = f F 0xC6 0xE6 keysym g = g G 0xC7 0xE7 keysym h = h H 0xC8 0xE8 keysym j = j J 0xCA 0xEA keysym k = k K 0xCB 0xEB keysym l = l L 0xCC 0xEC keysym z = z Z 0xDA 0xFA keysym x = x X 0xD8 0xF8 keysym c = c C 0xC3 0xE3 keysym v = v V 0xD6 0xF6 keysym b = b B 0xC2 0xE2 keysym n = n N 0xCE 0xEE keysym m = m M 0xCD 0xED keysym backslash = backslash bar 0xDC 0xFC keysym grave = grave asciitilde 0xC0 0xE0 keysym equal = equal plus 0xDE 0xFE keysym 3 = 3 numbersign 3 0xDF keysym 4 = 4 dollar 4 0xFF
This is the trickiest part of the X Cyrillic setup. You should define the conditions in which the current mode is switched between the regular and the Cyrillic one.
There are two ways to achieve that in Linux. One is XFree86-specific, while the other is more general (well, not too much, as I'll show below).
The XFree86-specific way is the following. There are two virtual
actions which can be assigned to the keys in the XF86Config file:
ModeShift which changes to the mode alternative to the regular
one without locking, and ModeLock
which does the same but with locking. In the first case the keys will
emit the alternative keysyms only when the key generating the
ModeShift is held down, whereas in the latter case the user needs
to press the key generating the ModeLock keysym only once and the
keyboard will be generating the alternative keysyms until that key is
pressed for a second time. You should assign the ModeShift and
ModeLock keysyms to the keys you want to work the mode switches.
Thus, if one wants to assign the ModeShift action to the right
Alt key, she should place the following directive in her XF86Config:
RightAlt ModeShift
Similarly, if the action required was ModeLock, the directive would be:
RightAlt ModeLock
See the XF86Config(4/5) for more details.
The other way is, again, to use the xmodmap utility. This is also
tricky. Generally, what you should do is:
Mode_switch keysym to some key, andMode_switch to some spare modifier mapNow the key to which the ModeShift is assigned will act as a mode
switch. This means that while it is held down, the keyboard is in
alternative mode.
Moreover, if you add a lockable key to that modifier's map, this key will lock the alternative mode.
Note: There are some problems however. Serge Vakulenko
(vak@cronyx.com) pointed out that the different X Server
implementations may have different rules of assignments the mode
switches (like, for example, some servers restrict the set of the keys
which may work in toggle mode to, say, CapsLock, NumLock,
and ScrollLock). Hopefully, this is a subject to change in the
next release of the X Window System. For more details, see the X
Protocol specification.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to make the CapsLock key have the
same functionality in the alternative mode, namely, to lock the upper
case. It seems to me, it is impossible to do it, because of the
idiotic X input translation design. If I am wrong, please correct me.
Let's see an example. Suppose, one wants to use the right Alt as
a mode switch and the ScrollLock as as a mode lock. First of all,
one should check the default modifiers' map. This is accomplished by
running the xmodmap without arguments:
$ xmodmap
xmodmap: up to 2 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):
shift Shift_L (0x32), Shift_R (0x3e)
lock Caps_Lock (0x42)
control Control_L (0x25)
mod1 Alt_L (0x40), Alt_R (0x71)
mod2 Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3
mod4
mod5
According to the above, the plan of attack is the following:
Alt_R key from the mod1 mapMode_switch keysym to the Alt_R keyScroll_Lock keysym to the keycode 78 (the code
of the actual ScrollLock)Mode_switch to the spare (mod3) map, andScroll_Lock keysym to the mod3 mapThus, here is the solution:
remove mod1 = Alt_R keysym Alt_R = Mode_switch keycode 78 = Scroll_Lock add mod3 = Mode_switch add mod3 = Scroll_Lock
If you use the latter solution, you may combine both the table and the
mode directives in your ~/.Xmodmap file.
Such files are generally supplied with the various X Cyrillic stuff packages. The good example is the tables in the old 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 X startup file to do it. The
system-wide file is /usr/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc; the personal
one is either ~/.xinitrc, or ~/.Xclients, or
~/.xsession, depending on what you have.
NOTE: If xmodmap complains on your table, try to load the
default table first. The default one is usually located in
/usr/lib/X11/etc/xmodmap.std.