Russian - Homophonic Input

Windows

(These instructions are provided in Word document format within the installer download).

This is a custom keyboard layout for homophonic Russian language input. It also includes the option to input stressed vowels, which will only work in Unicode-compliant applications.

This keyboard is provided as is, with no promise of support or assistance. This document provides all necessary information for installing and using this keyboard layout. The layout has been created with Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator program and should work in Windows XP. It is untested in all other Windows environments, and therefore may or may not work. Install at your own risk.

Download the Windows Installer (version 2.0, 357KB)

Installation Instructions

1. Double-click the setup.exe icon to run the installation program, wait until you see a dialog box indicating that the installation has completed (this may take a few seconds)
2. It is a good idea to log out of Windows to fully activate the new keyboard
3. After the keyboard has been successfully installed, you need add it to your Windows Language Bar.
   1. Go to your Start Menu > Settings > Control Panels > Regional & Language Options
   2. Click on the Languages Tab, and then click on the Details button under Text Services
   3. In the section on Installed Services, Click the Add button
   4. Choose Russian as the Input Language
   5. Check the box next to Keyboard Layout/IME
   6. Choose Russian with Stress, v1.5 from the Keyboard Layout/IME menu
   7. Click OK to all available windows

NOTE: It is possible to have two or more different keyboard layouts for a single language. If you already had the standard Russian layout installed, you will have the option in your Language Bar to choose which layout you’d like to use each time. Or you can remove layouts that you do not use in the Installed Services section of the Text Services box. This does not uninstall the layouts, it simply deactivates them. So you can re-activate them at any time.

Layouts

This is the layout for the unshifted state of the keyboard.

And this is the layout when you press the SHIFT key:

Here are the additional features of the keyboard:

To type stressed vowels hold down the RIGHT ALT key (or AltGr) while typing the vowel. There are also capital versions of the stressed vowels if you hold down the SHIFT and RIGHT ALT keys together while typing the vowel.

In general, it’s better to use common fonts that most people are likely to have. My experience has been that monospacing fonts, such as Courier, do not place the stress marks over the vowels properly. Here are some fonts that I recommend using to view stressed Cyrillic vowels:

Serif fonts: Book Antiqua, Century, Times, Times New Roman

Sans-Serif fonts: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma

The stressed vowels are combinations of the Combining Diacritic Acute (U+0301) and the vowels themselves, therefore you may notice that the stress mark is not always centered on the letter. This is a result of not having these characters precomposed in the Unicode 4.0 tables and unavoidable. This method of using the keyboard input method to create stressed vowels on the fly has been used rather than creating custom fonts to provide maximum transferability of documents that use these characters.

Things to disable in MS Word

When using this keyboard in MS Word or other MS Office applications, you may find that Word has built-in shortcuts that interfere with the use of the accented vowels. In order to avoid these problems, it is necessary to remove the offending keystrokes from Word’s options.

To do this:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Customize
2. Click on the Keyboard… button at the bottom of this window
3. In the window that appears, select the Catergory and then the Command with the conflicting assignment
4. You’ll see that the shortcut combinations appear in a box in the middle left
5. Select the conflicting combination and then click the Remove button at the bottom of the window

You’ll need to do this for the following commands:

Change History:

Sept 2010

• Recompiled for use on Windows Vista and Windows 7

Dec 2006

• Added double-carat parens on Shift state
• Fixed incorrect Shift layout
• Updated screen shots in documentation

  ---

  Macintosh

This is a custom keyboard layout for homophonic Russian language input.  It also includes the option to input stressed vowels, which will only work in Unicode-compliant applications. 

This keyboard is provided as is, with no promise of support or assistance.  This document provides all necessary information for installing and using this keyboard layout.  The layout has been created with Ukelele program and should work in Macintosh OS 10.4 or higher. It has not been tested on all versions of Macintosh OS, install at your own risk.

Download the Macintosh installer (418kb, version 1.1)

Install Instructions

1. Double-click the Russian Homophonic w/Stress.pkg icon to run the installation program
   1. Go to the System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources
   2. Check the box next to Russian – Homophonic w/Stress v1.1
   3. Close the open window
2. After the keyboard has been successfully installed, you need add it to your Keyboard Input Menu.

Layouts

This is the layout for the unshifted state of the keyboard.

And this is the layout when you press the SHIFT key:

Here are the additional features of the keyboard:

To type stressed vowels hold down the Control + Command while typing the vowel.  There are also capital versions of the stressed vowels if you hold down the SHIFT along with Control + Command keys together while typing the vowel.

Sample characters:  а́ е́ о́ ы́ ю́ я́ А́ Е́ О́ Ы́ Ю́ Я́

In general, it’s better to use common fonts that most people are likely to have.  My experience has been that monospacing fonts, such as Courier, do not place the stress marks over the vowels properly.  Here are some fonts that I recommend using to view stressed Cyrillic vowels:

Serif fonts:  Book Antiqua, Century, Times, Times New Roman

Sans-Serif fonts: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma

The stressed vowels are combinations of the Combining Diacritic Acute (U+0301) and the vowels themselves, therefore you may notice that the stress mark is not always centered on the letter.  This is a result of not having these characters precomposed in the Unicode tables and is unavoidable.  This method of using the keyboard input method to create stressed vowels on the fly has been used rather than creating custom fonts to provide maximum transferability of documents that use these characters.