Russian & Elvish sets

[matt3o]

I'm designing another russian and elven set. They will be released soon (not from SP).

Since I want to do things right I'd like some help from a Russian speaker or someone familiar with cyrillic keyboards. Anyone? The sets should support a wide variety of keyboards, I'll posts updates as soon as I have something ready.

[0100010]

[RaleghDirat]

Maybe now we can get some Codex Seraphinianus keyboard:
http://i.imgur.com/aHcFNw7.jpg

[depletedvespene]

Maybe now we can get some Codex Seraphinianus keyboard:
http://i.imgur.com/aHcFNw7.jpg

Will that be before or after Voynichish?

[RaleghDirat]

Well, I guess voynich will be easy to get permission from the author, so it will be first...

[matt3o]

no Russian speaking here?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Нет.

[ball00n]

Hey, matt3o, I can speak Russian and Ukrainian. I will be glad to help.

[matt3o]

Hey, matt3o, I can speak Russian and Ukrainian. I will be glad to help.

that's great. I'd need help mainly with the modifiers. It seems russian keyboards actually use english terms or at least latin letters on the modifiers, but would be nice to go full otaku and write everything in Russian.

what do you think? what is it used for "enter" "backspace" "alt" "control" and so on?

[Techno Trousers]

Ooh, questions... PBT or ABS? Will there be an option for Cyrillic only or Cyrillic primary and Latin secondary? I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself. But yuss!

[obfuscated]

@matto: You can search for images of pravetz 8 machines on the internet. These were Bulgarian machines sold in the eastern block and as far as I can see they have the additional Russian characters, not present in the Bulgarian alphabet. Unfortunately I don't think they have all of the modifiers.

Prazetz 8d and the machine it cloned. It might help to match modifiers:

[matt3o]

Ooh, questions... PBT or ABS? Will there be an option for Cyrillic only or Cyrillic primary and Latin secondary? I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself. But yuss!

This will be PBT. I think I'd like to go full Cyrillic, but I guess we can have both options.

Thanks for the heads up @obfuscated! I'll look into it

[matt3o]

look at that enter icon lovely



maybe I should just make icon modifiers

[zslane]

maybe I should just make icon modifiers

Yes! Icon modifiers, ftw!

[Techno Trousers]

This will be PBT. I think I'd like to go full Cyrillic, but I guess we can have both options.

Thanks for the heads up @obfuscated! I'll look into it

I'd prefer full Cyrillic myself, especially with Russian language mods. I love the idea--it will be unique among key sets, as far as I know.

[Techno Trousers]

I think maybe it would be good to have both icon and text mods, unless that makes the set too complex/expensive.

[Techno Trousers]

look at that enter icon lovely

You probably already know this, but those character positions are not the actual Russian layout.

[matt3o]

I think maybe it would be good to have both icon and text mods, unless that makes the set too complex/expensive.

I'll try to make all options available, but I need russian text mods! anybody?

[ball00n]

Hey! Really sorry for a late reply.

The problem with Russian mods is that there were not that many keyboards with Russian only mods. Most of the time English letters were used, even on soviet union made computers. Even now, pretty much everyone here is using plain transliteration from English to Russian when describing key combination.

But, there were a few keyboards made in USSR, that used Russian letters. E.g. keyboards for ЕС-7978 and ЕС-1842 systems. And I think we can take translations from them, because I don't think that you can not translate it better than they did. Hope that will help.
Translations for modifier keys are:
Enter - ВВОД - (Literally "ENTER")
Tab - ТАБ - (Short for "ТАБУЛЯЦИЯ" - "TABULATION")
Shift - РЕГ - (Short for "РЕГИСТР" - "CASE" as in "CASE-INSENSITIVE"
Ctrl - УПР - (Short for "УПРАВЛЕНИЕ" - literally "CONTROL")
Alt - АЛТ - (Short for "АЛЬТЕРНАТИВА" - literally "Alternative")
Caps Lock - ЗГЛ (Short for "ЗАГЛАВНЫЕ БУКВЫ" - "CAPITAL LETTERS")
Insert - ВСТ - ("ВСТАВИТЬ" - "INSERT")
Delete - УД - ("УДАЛИТЬ" - "DELETE")
Home - НАЧ - ("НАЧАЛО" - "BEGINNING")
End - КОН - ("КОНЕЦ" - "END")
Page Up - СТР↑ - ("СТРАНИЦА ↑" - "PAGE UP")
Page Down - СТР↓ - ("СТРАНИЦА ↓" - "PAGE DOWN")
Prnt Scr - ПЕЧ - ("ПЕЧАТЬ" - "PRINT")
Pause - ПАУЗА - ("ПАУЗА" - "PAUSE")
Num Lock - ЦИФ - ("ЦИФРЫ" - "NUMBERS")
Scroll Lock - ЗКР - I could not find what does that mean at the moment, but I will try to.

[matt3o]

that's great thanks! You missed the most important one: ESCAPE!

[depletedvespene]

that's great thanks! You missed the most important one: ESCAPE!

Soviet keyboards do not have an ESCAPE key. Duh!

[matt3o]

We would also need: BACKSPACE, MENU, FN and the OS key which is technically SUPER but we could use some icon there.

What about the F1-12 keys instead?

[Techno Trousers]

Maybe we could start with Google translate for the missing ones, and and get corrected as necessary by our native speaker ball00n? As an example, I was thinking about the F1-F12 being "function" keys. I found this function (verb) translation which seems decent on paper:

действовать
act, operate, work, function, proceed, do

So maybe Д1-Д12?

[Phenix]

that's great thanks! You missed the most important one: ESCAPE!

did they need one? Attacking is the best defense.
8)

[matt3o]

is there any way to abbreviate ПАУЗА ? or to put it on two lines?

[ball00n]

Yeah, that was my bad, I missed the "ESC" key, but it's actually were there and it's called "ВЫХ" which is short for "ВЫХОД" - "EXIT". And, I don't really know what happened, but I wrote wrong word for "PAUSE" key. It's actually "СТОП" which translates as "STOP".

Also, my original reference image was really blurry, but I found another one http://itmages.ru/image/view/4792745/763d6ee6 . Now I can clearly see that I made a mistake, the "Scroll Lock" key is actually "ЭКР" which could be short for "ЭКРАН" - "SCREEN", but i'm not entirely sure about that.

As for the other keys. BACKSPACE is present as "ВШ" and once again I don't know what does that supposed to mean. MENU could be easily translated as "МЕНЮ". Usually, menu that appears when right clicking on something or pressing "menu" button is called "context menu", but I don't think that it should be a problem.

F keys are translated as "Ф1"-"Ф12" because "FUNCTION" ("ФУНКЦИЯ") is a noun, at least it's used as a noun in Russian when referring to F-keys.

FN could be translated as "ФУНК" which is short for "ФУНКЦИЯ". "OS" literally translated as "ОС" - "ОПЕРАЦИОННАЯ СИСТЕМА". And writing "СУПЕР" on a "SUPER" key would be super cool! That word was heavily overused in late 90s - beginning of 00s.

[matt3o]

Thanks for your continued support @ball00n! you are a rockstar! I will post a first picture of the set in a moment!

PS: can we use БЕКСПЕЙС for backspace?

[joric]

> can we use БЕКСПЕЙС for backspace?
Absolutely you can't. It's rather ЗАБОЙ. You have to be super accurate with russian unless you're intentionally making a hollywood-style absurdity. Better get a reference soviet era keyboard.

[joric]

Just to clarify things you asked.

Those names are OK (I'm native russian and my father is a philologist):

BACKSPACE: ЗАБОЙ (standard dictates ВШ, Возврат Шага here but I don't like it, ЗАБОЙ is better and more frequently used)
F1-F12: Ф1-Ф12 (функциональные клавиши)
FN: ФУНК (функция, ФУН is okay too)
TAB: ТАБ (табуляция)
ENTER: ВВОД

MENU: МЕНЮ
SUPER: СУПЕР
SHIFT: РЕГ (регистр)
СAPS: ЗГЛ (заглавные)
ESC: ВЫХ (выход)
CTRL: УПР (управление, ака контроль)
ALT: АЛТ (альт, альтернативное значение)

PRTSCR: ПЕЧ (печать)
SCRLK: ЭКР (экран, screen)
BREAK: СТОП (i.e. stop, or maybe СТП if you need 3 chars)

INS: ВСТ (вставить)
DEL: УД (удалить, I'd rather use УДАЛ, because УД is kind of pejorative but oh well)

HOME: НАЧ (начало)
END: КОН (конец)
PAGE: СТР (страница, you can use СТР. ВВЕРХ as 'page up' and СТР. ВНИЗ as 'page down')
UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT: ВВЕРХ/ВНИЗ/ВЛЕВО/ВПРАВО (but I'd rather use arrows)
3 char versions if needed: ВРХ/ВНЗ/ЛЕВ/ПРВ, 4 char: ВЕРX/ВНИЗ/ЛЕВО/ПРАВ

NUMLOCK: ЦИФ (цифровой блок)

You should probably just copy a russian reference keyboard from google image search for consistency.
This is from ЭВМ ЕС-1842 (an IBM XT clone, so it almost matches modern ANSI keyboards).
Unusual keys are: "РУС" and "ЛАТ" RUS/LAT - dedicated key(s) for switching ENG/RUS layouts) and "Р/А" - Регистр/Алфавит (Case/Alphabet), also called "SHIFT 2", essentially a third layer for special characters.

Also pay attention to Ё placement looks like it's misplaced, better use modern russian layout for Ё (it should be on ~ key).

Here are keyboards with small ЗАБОЙ abbrevieated to ЗБ:

[ball00n]

Totally agree with @joric here. We also can use ГОСТ (which means Государственный Стандарт - State Standard) as a reference http://docs.cntd.ru/document/gost-14289-88 . It describes most of the keys we listed, outside of ЭКР, and, for obvious reasons, MENU, SUPER, FN and OS.