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:
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.
mapscrn program and the
/usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/koi2alt file.
loadkeys
program.
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..."
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 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:
xinitrc file (either local or global one):
xset +fp directory_with_fonts
xset fp rehash
cd to it and
run:
mkfontdir .
fonts.dir.
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 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: