Cyrillic (Russian) in Netscape for Windows

Optional Chapter - for Netscape 2 or 3 only

Read the following Appendixes ONLY if you want to use in Netscape ver. 2 or ver. 3 some Cyrillic fonts of your choice - not those that I suggest.

This Chapter may be useful for non-Russian fonts, for example Bulgarian.

Appendix 1. Fonts problems. How to check if a font works correctly.

Appendix 2. Modifying Netscape.INI file of Netscape 2,3 to use a font of your choice.

Appendix 3. Modifying your Fixed font for Netscape.

Appendix 1. Cyrillic fonts problems in Netscape. How to test fonts.

Netscape uses Fixed fonts to display Plain Text pages, such as a content of a Cyrillic text file or FTP directory screen.
Unfortunately, unlike Choose Proportional Font dialog, where you see all fonts installed in your Windows, Netscape shows initially only 2 standard Windows Fixed fonts in its
Choose Fixed Font dialog.

It was not easy for me to find Fixed Cyrillic fonts suggested in this article, that

can be selected in Choose Fixed Font dialog and also
work correctly in Netscape

I tested many Fixed fonts until I found good ones.
Some Fixed fonts can be selected in Choose Fixed Font dialog, but they are bad for WWW browsing in Netscape:

some make very bad display appearance of lists (such as a list on Yahoo page), showing large ugly symbols in the place of 'bullets'.
some are not scaled correctly for WWW - their size 10 is too small (hard and unpleasant to read), and size 12 is too large - text goes beyond right border of the screen.
some don't display correctly a letter of an alphabet - for example, show Russian 'g' instead of 'yo'.

For testing I used:
( If you want to check fonts of your choice, I suggest to use these testing items)

for item 1 above - Yahoo page.
for item 2 - Plain Text screen of some FTP directory, for example, one at the Microsoft FTP site - ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/.
You can use any other FTP directory screen for this.
for items 2 and 3 (and for general Cyrillic testing) - Test Pages that I constructed - in KOI8-R and CP-1251 coding.
(These pages are in Russian, so you need to use some other pages if you test a non-Russian Cyrillic fonts).
These pages allow to test both Proportional and Fixed fonts.
You can read these examples in one of the following sites:

in the U.S. in Russia

_KOI8-R fonts Test page_ _KOI8-R fonts Test page_

_CP-1251 fonts Test page_ _CP-1251 fonts Test page_

in the U.S.	in Russia
_KOI8-R fonts Test page_	_KOI8-R fonts Test page_
_CP-1251 fonts Test page_	_CP-1251 fonts Test page_

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Appendix 2. Modifying Netscape.INI file of Netscape 2,3 to use a font of your choice as a Fixed font

Read the following instructions only if you

want to use non-Russian Cyrillic fonts, for example Bulgarian, and your Fixed font is not selectable in Netscape
or
don't like Fixed fonts that I suggest and like your Proportional font so much that you want to use it not only for HTML pages, but also for Plain Text screens, that is to use it as a Fixed font also.
(I don't recommend it - Fixed fonts should be used as Netscape's Fixed fonts, not Proportional, if you have a choice !)

To use your Proportional font both as a Proportional and as a Fixed font in Netscape, you must modify file Netscape.INI located in your C:\NETSCAPE directory.

Let's assume that you want to use CP-1251 font 'ER Bukinist 1251' both as your Proportional and Fixed font. Do the following first:

Go to Netscape Options / Preferences / Fonts, and choose this font - 'ER Bukinist 1251' - as your Proportional font for a corresponding Encoding (Latin1 in ver.1, Korean in ver.2, Cyrillic in ver.3).
Close Netscape application.

This will result in appearing of 2 additional lines at the very bottom of Netscape.INI file - [INTL] section.

NOTE: This section does not exist initially, when you just install Netscape and use its default fonts. It appears only if you switch to your fonts in Options/Preferences/Fonts dialog.

Now you need to open Netscape.INI file, for example using NOTEPAD editor in Windows, and replace existing Fixed font in corresponding line of [INTL] section with yours(see example below).
Netscape lists Proportional font first, then Fixed font in the line you will see below.
'Courier New' is a default font used by Netscape as a Fixed font.

The following example is for Netscape 1.

What you see when you open NETSCAPE.INI file :

[INTL]
Font0=iso-8859-1,ER Bukinist 1251,12,Courier New,10

How it looks after you replaced a Fixed font there :

[INTL]
Font0=iso-8859-1,ER Bukinist 1251,12,ER Bukinist 1251,10

Now, when you call Netscape again, you will have your font both as a Proportional font and as a Fixed font.
You will be able to read Plain Text pages using this font, as well as HTML pages.

NOTE: Remember, if you choose later some Fixed font for the same Encoding in the
Choose Fixed Font dialog,
then you must repeat this Netscape.INI procedure again !

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Appendix 3. Modifying your Fixed font for Netscape

You can modify a Fixed font of your choice to make it work in Netscape, but it requires more knowledge about PC applications.

You can read the corresponding instruction, with the title "How to make your fixed KOI8-R font visible from Fonts menu (for programmers only)" at the very bottom of the following page by A.Chernov: 'About Netscape 3'.

End of Optional Chapter

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Author: Paul Gorodyansky