Computer Russification

In computing, Russification is the localization of computers and software, i.e., making the user interface of a computer and software to communicate in the Russian language and Cyrillic script.

Among the problems associated with Russification was absence of a single character encoding standard for Cyrillic(see Cyrillic script#Computer encoding), before the advent of Unicode.

History of the MS-DOS russification

The first official Russification of MS-DOS was carried out for MS-DOS 4.01 in 1989/1990, released on 1990-04-09. In Microsoft, the Russification project manager and one of its main developers was Nickolay Lyubovny (Николай Любовный).[1][2] A Russian version of MS-DOS 5.0 was also developed in 1991,[1] released on 1991-08-09. Based on an initiative of Microsoft Germany in March 1991, derivates of the Russian MS-DOS 5.0 drivers used for keyboard, display and printer localization support (DISPLAY.SYS, EGA.CPI, EGA2.CPI, KEYB.COM, KEYBOARD.SYS, MSPRINT.SYS, COUNTRY.SYS, ALPHA.EXE) could also be purchased separately (with English messages) as part of Microsoft's AlphabetPlus kit. This enabled English issues of MS-DOS 3.3, 4.01 and 5.0 to be set up for Eastern European countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria.[1]

Russification of Microsoft Windows

A comprehensive instruction set for computer Russification is maintained by Paul Gorodyansky. It is mirrored in many places and recommended by the U.S. Library of Congress[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Yuri Starikov, 15 Years of Russian MS-DOS 4.01 (Russian)
  2. ↑ http://www.developers.org.ua/archives/koldovsky/2007/09/17/yuriy-starikov-interview/ (Russian)
  3. ↑ "Tips on viewing Cyrillic text", U.S. LOC (assessed September 28, 2007)

External links