[Fontinst] RE: [tex-fonts] Cyrillic

[Ulrich Dirr]

Walter Schmidt wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2003 18:38:24 +0200, Ulrich Dirr wrote:
> 
>> I've some questions concerning cyrillic TeX support.
>> 
>> Wanted: easy keyboard input like the transliteration scheme of Walter
>> Schmidt (with OT2 coded fonts)
> 
> FYI:
> Neither the transliteration scheme nor its implementation were
> invented by me. 

I know but I found your name in the footline of the OT2 table and
remembered that you're quite active ;-)
 
>> but with modified input encoding. I would
>> like to have a "german" input coding and not "english" (e.g., 'sch'
>> instead of 'sh', 'ch' instead of 'kh', etc.pp.). How can I achieve
>> this? 
> 
> The transliteration is built into the fonts (TFMs) in form
> of input ligatures.  You would have to change them.  I don't
> think this is a good idea, however.  The present transliteration
> scheme is sort of a standard, AFAIK.

Yes, it looks like BS 2979 (1958) ['British Standards Institution &
Chemical Abstracts Service' often abbreviated BSI] in most parts for
russian. 

>> How can I replace CM fonts in this setup by CM-super (better cyrillic
>> glyphs)?
> 
> AFAIK, CM-Super does not support the OT2 scheme with these
> ligatures.  OT2 is useful, if you want to key in Cyrillic
> text from a latin-only keyboard.  However, the OT2 character
> set and the input ligatures lead to certain deficienies as far
> as correct hyphenation is concerned.  That's why the Russian
> experts don't take much care of OT2...

It's for sure that T2A etc. is the better way. It just because my two
favorite text editors can't display cp1251 or Unicode and I'm too lazy
to delve into emacs---yet another tool with a steep learning curve. I
already used this together with MS Visual Keyboard. It's looking
terrible and if you have to correct something you're lost.

The other reason is that it's intended only for short texts like
bibliography entries. Or russian proper names. And very often the input
is the 'Duden transcription' which is still very widespread in Germany
(I'm aware of the pro and cons).

BTW: for transliteration to german I use DIN 1460 (which differs from
ISO 9 only in five cases).
 
>> How can I setup other fonts which have cyrillic glyphs for use in
>> TeX? What's the standard procedure? (I would like to extract the
>> cyrillic part of Linotype Palatino OT, and Apostrophic Labs
>> Propaganda, etc.pp., and maybe Lazurski)
> 
> I'd like to know this, too.  An ot2.etx would be required,
> and also an .mtx file with all the required ligatures.
> 
> Walter

Best regards,
Ulrich Dirr