Cyrillic support

[Anton Zinoviev]

Hi!

I'd like to work for Emacs project, mostly on the support for the
Cyrillic languages.  I decided to write here in order to avoid
different people working on the same problem.  More precisely, I'd
like to do the following:

1. Input methods for Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Kyrgys,
Mongolian and Ukrainian, as well as a generic input method for Asian
Cyrillic languages (there are too many Asian Cyrillic languages and it
is not feasible to make different input method for all of them).

2. Support for CP1251 and PT154.  CP1251 is the default encoding for
GNU/Linux systems in Belarus and Bulgaria.  Now it is only partialy
supported in codepage.el -- the Ukrainian letter ghe with upturn and
many important symbols are not supported.  We need also PT154, because
CP1251 covers only the Slavic languages.  PT154 is encoding that
covers some of the Asian Cyrillic Languages (Mongolian, Kyrgyz,
Kazakh, Bashkir and others).

3. Creating language environments for most important Cyrillic
languages and generic environments for others.

4. Translate TUTORIAL to Bulgarian.

I've read that part of the Lisp sources of Emacs that interests me and
I think I understand how it works.  Actualy I've already done most of
the coding.  I maintain for Debian much Cyrillic-related stuff and
this has given to me contacts with people speaking various Cyrillic
languages.

I will be able to read Emacs mailing lists and bug-reports, but only
for a limited period of time because I have to work for other
projects.  However I will be responsible after that.

My comment on a previous post follows:

On 21 Dec 2001 Dave Love address@hidden wrote:
>
> I made such an environment, with a properly-defined windows-1251 and
> an additional `bulgarian-pho' input method.  Sorry, I thought I had
> replied previously about that.
> 
> It isn't installed yet.  I have been discussing Cyrillic support with
> Handa-san and may need to ask for opinions from users on what is the
> best way to do some things.  One thing that isn't clear is whether it
> is better to use mule-unicode characters uniformly or to mix them with
> 8859-5, which take half the space in the buffer.

I think it's better to mix mule-unicode with 8859-5.  Thus, the
encodings will be more compatible.  Note that now Emacs has different
input methods for Latin-1, Latin-2, etc.  I'd like to avoid this for
the Cyrillic languages.

Regards, Anton Zinoviev