This guy here's got some neat tips on russification.
I don't know if you'll find what you're looking for here..but he might be the expert to ask.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/index_en.htm

Windows uses the system locale/user locale (which are named in the typical creative MS fashion in XP) for the "spell checker" case, not the input settings.

I've had Word change its recognised language on me when I switched keyboards, though.

(For example, I once had English/US set up as an alternate language, because I know the keyboard layout from back in the Good Old Days when DOS would come up without a keyboard driver for some reason, but found that it caused Word to spell-check some things incorrectly, until I switched the language to English/UK -- I kept the layout as English/US, though. So that's possible.)

I am using Cyrillic Keyboard application to type in russian in phonetic mode. It allows to change layout or use different layouts.
But application sometimes conflicts with the system and makes me crazy.
I would rather to use something more stable.
What are you using to type in phonetic mode?

Linux and Mac have phonetic mode built-in.

Windows doesn't seem to have it.

How do I get it for Linux? I've been looking everywhere?

I have the same problem, I have no fuc.. idea what's the difference between layout and language switchers))))

by the way, here's my keyboard layout, and it's basic variant for russian language:

I totally love how Russian keyboards have a № symbol on the keyboard.

That's because we are special!!!))) And we like to write, that we are are №1 !!! )))))

Interesting that it replaces the # symbol on the US-English layout, which can sometimes mean “number”, with a different abbreviation for it. I can't say I've ever used # to mean “number”, so why someone thought it was common enough to deserve to be on the keyboard I have no idea. Can't help but wonder how Russian Perl programmers write their comments.

Of course, on UK keyboards they decided to replace the # symbol with the £ symbol, and added a whole new key for # to live on… so clearly the # was important to someone.

Russian perl programmers write in perl, not in Russain :) We use the same # sign for comments.

And note that our keyboards have BOTH layouts: http://breqwas.homeip.net:8000/img/misc/keyb.jpg

So called ЙЦУКЕН.

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I find that most of our Russian developers use English keyboards and just put stickers on the keys for their own language.

Yes, that is how it is done when you cannot buy keyboard with both layouts.

Or if you don't blind type which is quite often among Russians.

Suckage, isn't it. I always use the layout shown as Linux on your pic, whatever OS and machine I'm using. As I mostly use Win as desktop these days, I have this as a custom layout. And if I'm in an internet cafe or something like that, I use this awesome page and select the яВерты2 layout in it.

The Mac way is based on visual analogies rather than phonetics - W kinda looks like Ш, H а бит like Ч. Utterly hateful.

Oh, neat!

brad:
> Oh, neat!

Had to buy a domain because people complained that it's hard to remember such long URL while in an Internet-cafe, so here it is:
http://porusski.net

:)

olgana:
> I am using Cyrillic Keyboard application to type in
> russian in phonetic mode.
> ...But application sometimes conflicts with the system
> and makes me crazy.
> I would rather to use something more stable.
> What are you using to type in phonetic mode?

There is 100 times safer (and 100 times simpler) way to the _the same_ - takes (one time job) 19 minutes to tune-up regular _system_ keyboard to the same Phonetic mode -
htere is nothing better, simpler and troublefree than regular system input!
And while using Phonetic layout with system keyboard, you also can easily modify it to your liking.

All that is described on the site already listed above, but here is the direct link:
http://Phon.RusWin.net (in Russian)
or in English the same: http://Phonetic.RusWin.net

:)

Thanks. I'll try.

Perfect! Thanks.

It makes sense to use default Windows (or rather traditional) layout for Russian for ergonomics sake. Often used symbols are located under pointing fingers, seldom used symbols are under little fingers. Surely there are some misplaced symbols like , or ё Microsoft located in funny places.

AFAIK, the traditional (aka typewriter) layout was designed with another goal in mind entirely (one may go as far as to say that it is anything BUT ergonomic), namely - to move the frequently subsequent letters as far apart as possible, so that the little arms with letters on them that do the actual printing on a typewriter do not get stuck together (which didn't help me much back in the days of typewriters - they used to get stuck together ALL THE TIME, the fucking morons). But hey, I'm used to it, I blind type it (the йцукен, that is), and every computer in Russia probaly has it, so yes, Brad, go for it!

OMG, what kind of keyboard is this?? In origin the keys are all in other places! But the idea is good, phonetic mode might be really useful for learning languages.

Language settings in windows are wonky. You change the language and suddenly some but not all applications decide to use the new language to display dialogs and menu options. Trying to keep straight which of the numerous "Regional and Language Options" is the one you need to change to make applications show the date in Spanish or to make applications show menus in English or make internet explorer stop defaulting to showing google in spanish cuz I'm tired and don't want foriegn language practice at that moment and so on is confusing and often trial and error to say the least. There does seem to be some bit of notifying the underlying apps what the language settings are...Somehow "I want to see dates and google in Russian" is completely unrelated to "I want to type Russian on my keyboard". More likely use case would be someone who wants to read in one language but type in a different (eg. always type with an english key layout)

Windows distinguishes language vs. layout due to old charset issues.

The v->ж correspondence in Linux's layout is driving me crazy. "v" does not look nor sound anything like "ж".

I like Gnome's multi-key entry method, so "ч" is just "ch" :)

they did it to make letters "х" "у" and "й" closer to each other:))

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/6167/screenshot007yw8.jpg