Next Previous Contents 2. System-wide setup 2.1 Choosing Charset As for now, the best choice seems to be windows-1251. It gives the user compatibility with MS Windows which is a must-have for many of us. If you do not care about compatibility, iso-8859-5 is the best supported and easiest to set up. Note that Belarusian support package from http://www.bellinux.f2s.com contains all the files mentioned in the present HOWTO unless otherwise stated in the text. 2.2 Windows-1251 in the kernel Windows-1251 support in the kernel is needed mostly to visualize MS Windows filenames in Cyrillic with the console and X Window system localized in windows-1251. As latest FAT file systems store filenames in Unicode, we have to define the output charset of the Virtual File System layer. To apply the windows-1251 patch to the kernel: cd /path_to_your_kernel_source_tree patch -p0 < your_patch.patch Recompile and reinstall the kernel. Refer to Kernel-HOWTO about the details. Add `codepage=866,iocharset=microsoft-cp1251' to your mount options in order to get the filenames in windows-1251. 2.3 Setting locale Do localedef -f CP1251 -i be_BY be_BY or localedef -f ISO8899-5 -i be_BY be_BY to compile the locale in windows-1251 encoding or iso-8859-5 encoding. Check how it works by setting LANG=be_BY and running a locale-aware program like date or cal. 2.4 Belarusian in console Setting Belarusian with iso-8859-5 There are two ways to set up Belarusian with iso-8859-5 Load iso-8859-5 font Load by2.kmap keymap or by.kmap Look at the scripts by.iso and by2.iso for an example. This method has one serious drawback - you will loose all pseudographic characters and, say, you Midnight Commander will look somewhat naked. The second method described below preserves all pseudographic characters: Load UniCyr font Load by2.kmap keymap or by.kmap Load Application-Charset Map iso05.acm Look at the scripts by.iso2 and by2.iso2 for an example. Also beware that different Linux distributions have different console-related packages - console-tools or kbd. Abovementioned scripts are meant to work with console-tools which is by far more popular. Setting Belarusian with windows-1251 There is no windows-1251 console fonts and the only way to get it work is Load UniCyr font Load by2.kmap keymap or by.kmap Load Application-Charset Map cp1251.acm Look at the script by2.win for an example. Setting Belarusian with koi8-ru There is no koi8-ru console fonts and the only way to get it work is Load UniCyr font Load by-stb.koi.kmap keymap or byru-stb.koi.kmap Load Application-Charset Map koi8-ru.acm Look at the scripts by-stb.koi and byru-stb.koi for an example. 2.5 Belarusian in X Window System Dirty hack: Install Cyrillic fonts for X Windows. You can only use iso-8859-5, koi8-ru and microsoft-1251. BTW, there is a big difference between koi8-ru and koi8-r. The latest does not have CYRILLIC LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I and CYRILLIC LETTER SHORT U. Make and install xruskb package which can be downloaded from http://www.bellinux.f2s.com Replace .xmm files in your xruskb directory by those found in the folder modified_keymaps of belarusian-0.1.tar.gz distribution. Add the following lines in your  /.Xdefaults file xrus*modeButton1.labelString: BEL xrus*modeButton1.label: BEL Run xrus jcuken-cp1251 or xrus jcuken-iso5 to start keyboard switcher. Right solution: A patch to XFree 3.3.5 and 4.0 from Aleksey Novodvorsky that allows the use of windows-1251 with XKB. The original location is at ftp.logic.ru/pub/logic/linux/be-locale but it is also available in Belarusian support package from http://www.bellinux.f2s.com. Lucky users of Linux-Mandrake RE get a patched XFree86 out of box. Next Previous Contents