Russian Keyboard Problem on 10.5.7

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Russian Keyboard Problem on 10.5.7

I've recently bought a russian apple keyboard, which has dual characters on each key ( cyrillic and latin ). the latin side works perfectly, but when I try to type in russian I have one major problem: the punctuation keys which work for the latin do not work for the cyrillic part (as there are 33 characters in cyrillic alphabet, only 26 in latin ) and the usual keys used for full stop, comma and the such are taken up by russian characters. can anyone help me and tell me which keys on the russian keyboard are the punctuation ones. i hope this makes sense :S rather disappointed by apple tbh, as theres nothing to help you in the manual. thanks

iMac 2.4Ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on May 16, 2009 9:40 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

May 16, 2009 9:48 AM in response to The0legend

I've recently bought a russian apple keyboard, which has dual characters on each key ( cyrillic and latin ).

Is that really made by Apple? I've never heard of them making such a thing with dual characters.

when I try to type in russian I have one major problem: the punctuation keys which work for the latin do not work for the cyrillic part (as there are 33 characters in cyrillic alphabet, only 26 in latin ) and the usual keys used for full stop, comma and the such are taken up by russian characters.

The software keyboard layout which is selected in system prefs/international/input menu has to match what is on your particular physical keyboard. Whether Apple provides one that does that I am not sure, since I cannot see your keyboard. Russian-Phonetic should have the same punctuation as English, but Russian will have б for comma and ю for period. Is that what you are getting? Which box is checked in your system prefs?

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

May 16, 2009 10:03 AM in response to The0legend

PS On the "Russian" keyboard layout, you will find comma and period at Shift 6 and Shift 7. If you are by chance using the "Russian-PC" layout, then period and comma are at / and ? (rightmost bottom key).

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Answer 3

niasilil

Level 1

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May 17, 2009 10:47 AM in response to The0legend

You can just add a file russianwin.rsrc to Library/Keyboard Layouts and a new "Russian PC" layout will be available. It will have comma, question mark, and period in the same place where they were 100 years ago in the times of typewriters.

You can google this file up or grab it here http://dmitro.name/archives/128 for example (first link from google). I am not sure if such links are allowed here.

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

May 17, 2009 11:41 AM in response to niasilil

You can just add a file russianwin.rsrc to Library/Keyboard Layouts and a new "Russian PC" layout will be available.

Have you actually gotten that to work? In my experience, only .keylayout files work in current versions of OS X, and the old .rsrc format does not.

How does russianwin.rsrc 's layout differ from the Russian-PC that comes with OS X 10.5?

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Answer 5

niasilil

Level 1

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May 18, 2009 5:02 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Yes, I have added it to my new iMac a couple of days ago.

Actually, I was wrong about the "old typewriter". The one which Mac has is the old style. Another layout came from Windows.
It is very annoying for PC to Mac switchers to use this new layout.
Here is the link to the win layout
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/4/48/Keyboardlayoutru.png

This one is the old typewriter layout, which windows also has.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/a/a9/Keyboardlayout_ru%28typewriter%29.gif

My MacOs did not have this layout, it had another one, so called Russian Phonetic, where english letters correspond to russian ones (A to А, B to Б, ...)

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

May 19, 2009 12:10 PM in response to niasilil

Yes, I have added it to my new iMac a couple of days ago.

For some reason I can't get the .rsrc file to show up in the input menu.

The Russian-PC layout that comes with OS X 10.5 is missing the character ё if you have a US (ANSI) keyboard rather than an European (ISO) keyboard.

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2007/11/os-x-105-leopard-fixing-russian-pc.html

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