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Time well spent...
Jul. 30th, 2001 08:00 pmI got a good start on the ethnographic text that's due the middle of next month.
In between, I fired up one of the new computers for the store to see what kind of mechanism is used for supporting Cyrillic keyboards.
A long time ago, when I was working in Houston, many of the people with whom I worked used the so-called "phonetic" layout instead of the "standard" layout that Microsoft styled after traditional Russian typewriter keyboards.
The phonetic layout, as the name implies, places the "es" character with the "S" key, the "en" character with the "N", and so on, with some small reaches for characters (such as "sh", which is assigned to "W" - presumably because of their similar shapes) that have no direct phonetic equivalent in English.
There was software to do this, but it cost money and worse, it was poorly integrated (i.e., not at all) with the rest of Windows. When you switch the Windows keyboard from "EN" to "RU", there is a corresponding change in, say, the language setting in Word. Using a third-party phonetic layout, there was no such change, which made spell-checking Russian text problematical.
I found that the mechanism Windows 95 used for figuring out what key was what in Russian was a file named 'kbdru.kbd'. I took a look at the binary, and figured out what needed to be changed to have a phonetic layout. That replacement file has been used by a lot of people who like phonetic keyboards.
In WIndows 2000 Pro, which is what many new computers at NASA are equipped with, this hack will not work. I found out why today. The new mechanism involves a file called 'kbdru.dll', and I am about 60% of the way toward figuring out how the thing is arranged. The major difference that I can see is that the new file has characters encoded in it using their Unicode values, which is no biggie.
In other news, I've been getting a steady stream of e-mails asking me to pass judgment on an attachment that, it turns out, contains a virus. The translation profession, it seems, is taking a beating, as many of these messages are coming from people in the industry. Good thing I'm using Linux (not that I run strange executables anyway).
I received a spam message with a compelling subject: "Out lawyers will be in touch with you." Or something similar. Compelling, indeed. Yes, I did open it. I'd like to reply with something like "Our ICBMs will be landing in your neighborhood," but it would only encourage the misbegotten idiot who sent out the message, plus I'm short of ICBMs at the moment.
In yet other news, it turns out that running my jury-rig fan at 5.5 Vdc is not enough to keep the VAIO from overheating. I've attached a 9 Vdc supply, which gives me better air flow and is still not too noisy.
One week and counting until I depart for Houston. All is - for now - copacetic.
Cheers...
In between, I fired up one of the new computers for the store to see what kind of mechanism is used for supporting Cyrillic keyboards.
A long time ago, when I was working in Houston, many of the people with whom I worked used the so-called "phonetic" layout instead of the "standard" layout that Microsoft styled after traditional Russian typewriter keyboards.
The phonetic layout, as the name implies, places the "es" character with the "S" key, the "en" character with the "N", and so on, with some small reaches for characters (such as "sh", which is assigned to "W" - presumably because of their similar shapes) that have no direct phonetic equivalent in English.
There was software to do this, but it cost money and worse, it was poorly integrated (i.e., not at all) with the rest of Windows. When you switch the Windows keyboard from "EN" to "RU", there is a corresponding change in, say, the language setting in Word. Using a third-party phonetic layout, there was no such change, which made spell-checking Russian text problematical.
I found that the mechanism Windows 95 used for figuring out what key was what in Russian was a file named 'kbdru.kbd'. I took a look at the binary, and figured out what needed to be changed to have a phonetic layout. That replacement file has been used by a lot of people who like phonetic keyboards.
In WIndows 2000 Pro, which is what many new computers at NASA are equipped with, this hack will not work. I found out why today. The new mechanism involves a file called 'kbdru.dll', and I am about 60% of the way toward figuring out how the thing is arranged. The major difference that I can see is that the new file has characters encoded in it using their Unicode values, which is no biggie.
In other news, I've been getting a steady stream of e-mails asking me to pass judgment on an attachment that, it turns out, contains a virus. The translation profession, it seems, is taking a beating, as many of these messages are coming from people in the industry. Good thing I'm using Linux (not that I run strange executables anyway).
I received a spam message with a compelling subject: "Out lawyers will be in touch with you." Or something similar. Compelling, indeed. Yes, I did open it. I'd like to reply with something like "Our ICBMs will be landing in your neighborhood," but it would only encourage the misbegotten idiot who sent out the message, plus I'm short of ICBMs at the moment.
In yet other news, it turns out that running my jury-rig fan at 5.5 Vdc is not enough to keep the VAIO from overheating. I've attached a 9 Vdc supply, which gives me better air flow and is still not too noisy.
One week and counting until I depart for Houston. All is - for now - copacetic.
Cheers...
