Slackware 12.1 International

Вячеслав · 08-23-2008, 01:29 AM

How do you do!
I have a question. How to configure the support of the Russian language in the command line, in the names of files and folders in KDE?
Thanks.

harryhaller · 08-23-2008, 02:15 AM

Hi Вячеслав.

Check out scim. It supports the cyrillic alphabet as well as cjk (chinese, japanese, korean) etc.

With it you can enter cyrillic characters mostly anywhere including the command line.

harryhaller · 08-23-2008, 02:23 AM

I am assuming, of course, that you don't want to set up the system totally in russian. If you do, then you should check out how to change the locale.

ErV · 08-23-2008, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Вячеслав

How do you do!
I have a question. How to configure the support of the Russian language in the command line, in the names of files and folders in KDE?
Thanks.

1) Set system locale (LANG) to russian. This is done in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Set the system locale.  (no, we don't have a menu for this ;-)
# For a list of locales which are supported by this machine, type:
#   locale -a

export LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R

2) Select font with russian character map. This is done in /etc/rc.d/rc.font

Code:

#!/bin/sh
#
# This selects your default screen font from among the ones in
# /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts.
#
setfont -v koi8c-8x16 -u koi8r

3) Select russian keyboard map in /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Load the keyboard map.  More maps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps.
if [ -x /usr/bin/loadkeys ]; then
 /usr/bin/loadkeys ru-ms.map
fi

Language (in terminal) will be switched by pressing right ctrl.
4) IN /etc/X11/xorg.conf tune keyboard section like this:

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
    Option         "XKbModel" "pc105"
    Option         "XKbLayout" "us,ru(winkeys)"
    Option         "XKbOptions" "grp:rwin_toggle,grp_led:scroll,grp:shifts_toggle"
EndSection

Language will be indicated by scrolllock, and you can toggle language by pressing right "windows" key, or two shifts together. Restart X after modifications.
5) In KDE control center, go to "Regional and Accessibility"->"Country/Region & Language". Press "add language", select russian language, and place it first in list.
6) if you are mounting windows volumes (fat32/ntfs), make sure they use correct codepage or locale.
examples:
ntfs-3g volume:

Code:

/dev/hdc3	/mnt/ntfs1	ntfs-3g		defaults,locale=ru_RU.KOI8-R,gid=users,fmask=113,dmask=003 1 0

cd-rom:

Code:

/dev/hda         /mnt/cdrom       iso9660     users,gid=users,ro,iocharset=koi8-r 0   0

Some of these settings are available fron pkgtool, but I prefer editing configuration directly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by harryhaller

Hi Вячеслав.

Check out scim. It supports the cyrillic alphabet as well as cjk (chinese, japanese, korean) etc.

With it you can enter cyrillic characters mostly anywhere including the command line.

There is NO need to use this to make russian characters work. Slackware already has everything you need for russian support.

ErV · 08-23-2008, 02:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by harryhaller

I am assuming, of course, that you don't want to set up the system totally in russian. If you do, then you should check out how to change the locale.

If you don't want to change system completely to russian, then
1) Add section to xorg.conf, as mentioned before.
2) Set /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap and /etc/rc.d/rc.font as I've mentioned before.
3) setup fstab as mentioned before
4) Set system locale (/etc/profile.d/lang.sh) to this:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Set the system locale.  (no, we don't have a menu for this ;-)
# For a list of locales which are supported by this machine, type:
#   locale -a

# en_US is the Slackware default locale:
export LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
export LC_MESSAGES=en_US
#export LC_ALL=ru_RU.KOI8-R

This is required, because otherwise KDE might select incorrect encoding for filenames (ISO-8whatever encoding, which no one ever uses).
System messages will be in english, but you'll have russian support.
Unfortunately with this configuration some programs will still detect your locale in russian and print russian text (Qt4 programs). You might even try something like en_US.KOI8-R, but some programs won't understand it.

ErV · 08-23-2008, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by harryhaller

I am assuming, of course, that you don't want to set up the system totally in russian. If you do, then you should check out how to change the locale.

Changing only locale won't be enough, because you'll need to configure terminal fonts, terminal keymap, and xorg.conf's keyboard configuration. Otherwise you won't be able to type in russian.

harryhaller · 08-23-2008, 03:10 AM

I stand corrected!

Thanks ErV, since I only use scim for learning chinese, my posts had no basis in practice. Your posts were hence also very useful info for me.

ErV · 08-23-2008, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by harryhaller

I stand corrected!

Thanks ErV, since I only use scim for learning chinese, my posts had no basis in practice. Your posts were hence also very useful info for me.

Russian doesn't have anything like kanji, so chinese is another story.

harryhaller · 08-23-2008, 05:34 AM

Quite.

SCIM is excellent for simply inputing text in other characters - european, cjk or whatever.

Вячеслав · 08-23-2008, 12:22 PM

Thanks for all for such detailed howto.

tramni1980 · 08-24-2008, 05:55 AM

Hello!
I have a question that I think pertains here.

I want to use emacs without X, i.e. in the console only and write utf8 encoded cyrillic text (Bulgarian to be precise). Is there a way to achieve that?
In the Changes and Hints file there was something about enabling utf8 console, probably that is what I should do, but Patrick warns that there is some danger of misinterpretation of some commands. So can I achieve my goal without running into this risk? I wish I could leave everything in english on my machine, I just want to write in console emacs in utf8 Bulgarian.

Regards,
Martin