cyrillic in OS X vs. OS 9

Question

cyrillic in OS X vs. OS 9

I did research in Russia when I was using OS 9 on a G3 powerbook, and did a lot of writing in cyrillic. I used the regular Apple Russian language option that came with my G3, although I did download a special phonetic keyboard program, which at that time was not included in the available Apple keyboards. Now I have a G4 powerbook running OS X (10.4.2). It includes the phonetic cyrillic keyboard and writing in cyrillic is no problem, but I can't read any of the cyrillic text that I wrote in OS 9 -- in all my files, anything that I wrote in cyrillic just appears as gibberish. What can I do to make these files readable?

Posted on Nov 11, 2005 1:30 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 11, 2005 1:52 PM in response to Christina Kiaer

Hello,
What kind of files are they? HWat program were they generated with and what format are they saved as?

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

123,654 points

Nov 11, 2005 1:52 PM in response to Christina Kiaer

OS X uses Unicode while OS 9 Cyrillic uses different encoding. You need to use a font with CY at the end of the name, and perhaps a non-Unicode app like Appleworks.

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Answer 3

Nov 11, 2005 3:20 PM in response to Ivan Sahba AKA Vanya

The cyrillic files I wrote in OS 9 are WordPerfect for Mac files.

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Answer 4

Nov 11, 2005 3:39 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

thank you for this information, it helps to know that there's an explanation for my problem. though I'm not sure what to do with it. I tried copying the text of a file from an old Wordperfect for Mac OS 9 document into a new Word document in OS X, and then tried saving it using a font ending in CY, but that didn't do anything. The cyrillic portion of the text still appears as gibberish. I also tried to open Appleworks, which seems to be part of Microsoft Office, but I couldn't figure out what to do. Could you please be more specific in your suggestions of what I should try to do? Sorry to be boneheaded, I'm obviously not a computer whiz.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

123,654 points

Nov 11, 2005 4:41 PM in response to Christina Kiaer

Appleworks has nothing to do with MS Office. Two totally separate apps.

I take it you have WordPerfect for OS 9 running in Classic? If so, then I would open a doc and resave it in a couple different formats if possible, like .rtf and .html and .txt (plain text) if available. Then try opening the new formats with Word or Appleworks, and (if necessary) select the whole text and switch the font to one with CY at the end of the name.

If you send me one of your wp docs, I can try it myself. Click on my name for the address.

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