Installing the KU Homophonic Russian keyboard for Windows 2000/XP
The Windows operating system provides a keyboard that will allow you to type in Russian, but this keyboard uses the layout of the Russian typewriter keyboard. While many are able to learn to touch type using this different layout, for most students it is easier to use a remapped keyboard on which there are sound correspondences between the Russian and English letters. These keyboards are known as homophonic (meaning "sounds the same") keyboards. The KU homophonic keyboard attempts to reflect sound correspondences when possible, and to map other letters and symbols for ease of typing. For the purpose of illustration, the layouts are provided below:
Keyboard Layouts
Normal State
Shift State
For instructors wishing to include marked stress, we have also included mappings for all stressed vowels. These can be accessed by pressing the desired key while simultaneously holding down the Alt, Ctrl and Shift buttons.
Installation of these keyboards is done automatically via a Windows installer file (msi). There is no need to do anything other than download the file and click on the installation file. Everything is put in the correct folder and all of the neccessary registry changes are made for you. The only additional step is to enable the keyboard in the "Regional and Language Options" control panel. You will find a complete explanation of the procedure below.
1) Click here to download the KU Homophonic Keyboard. Save the file to your desktop and unzip the file. Inside the zipped file, you will find an installation package, a folder containing the keyboard .dll file and a read me file.
2) Click on the KU_RUSS Windows Installer Package. When the installer is finished, the following window will be displayed.
Click the Close button and you are finished with the first part of the process. Now that you have installed the new keyboard, you will need to activate it within Windows.
3) Go to the Start button at the bottom left of your screen and click on it. Go up to Settings and wait for Control Panel to pop up to the right of it. Move over to Regional and Language Options and double-click it.
4) Go to the Languages tab and click the Details... button under "Text Services and Input Languages".
5) Click Add under "Installed Services
6) Find "Russian" in the list.
7) Check the Keyboard layout/IME box and then Select Russian - KU Homophonic from the list.
Click the OK in the bottom right of the window to complete this step.
8) At this point your Text Services and Languages window should look like the one below:
Congratulations, you have installed the KU homophonic keyboard.
Once the installation and activation are complete, you can switch back and forth between your foreign language and English keyboards by using the toggle indicator in the taskbar (circled in red below).
If the toggle indicator (which by default should read "En" for English) does not appear in the lower right of your screen, click on the the Language Bar button at the bottom of the Settings tab (see above) and make sure that the "Show the Langauge bar on the desktop" box is checked.
This web site was created by the staff of the Ermal Garinger Academic
Resource Center. All questions and comments should be sent to the webmaster at egarc@ku.edu. Last updated June 8, 2007.