In
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, Russification involves the
localization of
computers and
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
, allowing the
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
of a computer and its software to communicate in the
Russian language using
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
.
Problems associated with Russification before the advent of
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
included the absence of a single
character-encoding standard for
Cyrillic (see
Cyrillic script#Computer encoding).
History of the MS-DOS Russification
The first official Russification of
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
was carried out for
MS-DOS 4.01 in 1989/1990, released on . In
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
, the Russification project manager and one of its main developers was Nikolai Lyubovny (Николай Любовный).
A Russian version of
MS-DOS 5.0 was also developed in 1991,
released on . 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.
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
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
.
See also
*
Cyrillization
*
GOST 10859
GOST 10859 (1964) is a standard of the Soviet Union which defined how to encode data on punched cards. This standard allowed a variable word size, depending on the type of data being encoded, but only uppercase characters.
These include the non-A ...
*
Romanization of Russian
The romanization of the Russian language (the transliteration of Russian text from the Cyrillic script into the Latin script), aside from its primary use for including Russian names and words in text written in a Latin alphabet, is also essentia ...
*
АДОС, unrelated to Russian MS-DOS
*
PTS-DOS
*
Mojibake
Mojibake ( ja, 文字化け; , "character transformation") is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, oft ...
References
External links
Modern Online (Virtual) Keyboard for Russian (not just alphabet order)
User interfaces
Russian language
Russification
Computing in the Soviet Union
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