Question -- Cyrillic letters, English layout for keyboard

[icklehelsy.livejournal.com]

Hi,
I have a question about typing cyrillic letters on my keyboard. I have an IBM Thinkpad with Windows XP. It has the possibility of using many different alphabets & I know how to turn them on and off, install them etc. via language bar and control panel. My problem is key placement with Russian cyrillic. For example, I can type in Serbian cyrillic and the keys are all in the same plays e.g. when I hit my English "D," the Serbian letter rendered is Д, "I" is И and "N" is Н. Which makes typing in Serbian really easy. I'm assuming that the keyboards made in Serbia have that layout but I could be wrong. However in Cyrillic Russian the order is not the English order but the Russian keyboard order which, as all of you probably know, goes "У К Е З В Ы" where we have E, R, T, P, D, S etc. So it's insanely difficult to type in Cyrillic on this machine. I know that on the Apple laptops there is an option for Cyrillic letters in English layout so that they "correspond" (I don't know how to put it more clearly) but I have looked and looked in all the language menus, alphabets etc. and it seems to me that there is no way to use the Cyrillic alphabet and have the keys where they would correspond to the English department e.g. З Т И А П where Z T I A P are on English keyboard.
I know that stickers you can put on your keyboard exist to make this easier but I kind of want something less permanent because I type more in Serbian cyrillic than in Russian.
Sorry for this complicated problem. In sum, is there any way around this? An alphabet I can download or something?
Thank you.

Comments

[david-us.livejournal.com]

If you Firefox as your browser, there is an excellent add-on, called russkey (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/561), that can be used to toggle the phonetic Cyrillic keyboard on and off. This add-on has a lot of other features, as well. You can highlight any word(s) and right-click on them and it will do a translation English->Russian or Russian-English. The translation isn't always that good, but it can come in handy for a quick reference. This add-on places the toggle icon in the lower right-hand corner of your screen for easy access. Also, the author of this add-on frequently improves and updates it. The updates occur automatically whenever you start-up Firefox.

Another solution is to replace the default Microsoft Russian keyboard (non-phonetic) with a phonetic one. Instructions on how to do that are here (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/kbd_e.htm#contVista).

I have both installed. Some of the keystrokes are not quite so obvious, however - but you'll learn those in time. For instance: "Я" is created by typing "Q". But, for the most part, they are very obvious.

Give it try! I experienced your same frustration until I installed these. Good luck!