Progress on the Russian, um, front...

Having compiled a bunch of Cyrillic X fonts and 'xet' them into my server's font path, and having installed the 'xruskb' keyboard utility, it would appear that I have everything lined up to type in Cyrillic. I think my current problem is that the applications I use most (Mozilla, right now) don't show the Cyrillic as I am typing it.

And apparently, if I submit what I type to a search engine, the sent data doesn't look all that palatable to the receiver. (Rambler.ru returns a bunch of '?' characters and says the query is 'neinformativnyi', which kinda-sorta means 'lacking information value'.)

There is one small ray of light in the darkness, however. I can call up an xterm that will allow me to type in Cyrillic using the command 'xterm -fn koi10x16'.

If I run lynx in such an xterm window, call up rambler.ru and enter a query (e.g., 'shakhmaty', or in KOI8, 'ЫБИНБФЩ'), the screen shows me Cyrillic.

Excellent.

However, if I send the query, the result shows a bunch of Latin letters (UAEIAOU) and the comment 'Ignoriruetsya: UAEIAOU (v Internete ne najdeno)', basically saying nothing was found on the Internet.

Rambler's response here sounds a little better than 'neinformativnyi'.

It makes sense to assume that the information received by the rambler server is different, depending on whether I am using Mozilla or lynx. I am beginning to recall that there are other pieces of data sent along with http requests.

Then again, when I cut and paste individual Cyrillic letters into rambler, the query succeeds. So what gives?

So, how much progress have I really made? Very little, it seems. There is more to X than meets the eye.

Cheers...