The Winamp Cyrillic Howto

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XMMS Cyrillic Howto, click here.

Welcome,

Here you can find some simple instructions how to set Winamp to display Cyrillic alphabet in the playlist and in the main window. Those instructions are for the latest version Winamp 5, and below, for version 2.

This page may be usefull for Bulgarians, Serbians, Macedonians, Russians, Ukrainians and other, living abroad and not having a Cyrillized (Russified) Windows system.

After those manipulations all songs with titles in Cyrillic (ID3v1 or ID3v2 tags) will be seen beautifully in Cyrillic. The songs whose titles are in the Latin alphabet are displayed normally.

The secret is to use a tweaked font (Arial Cyr) where I have replaced all Latin accented and diacritical letters with the normal Cyrillic ones (code page 1251), the same as on a Cyrillized system. Otherwise, I have internally renamed the font to "Cyrial" in order to avoid some conflicts with the system font family Arial.

Modern skin screenshot - classic skin screenshot

Notice: if your system uses a native Cyrillic encoding, all the instructions here may not be necessary. If you still don't see correctly the songs, try this (tip from Mario Ivanov): General Preferences > Media Library > Advanced Library options > Modify Settings and uncheck the option "Use library title Information for playlist item formatting"

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Installation of the font "Cyrial"

The installation is not very difficult:

Download and unzip the font file CYRIAL.TTF (39 KB)
Open the Windows Fonts folder: Start > Run > Fonts (Enter)
Copy inside the font file Cyrial.ttf.
Screenshots from Microsoft

Now restart Winamp to let it recognize the new font.

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Playlist window

The setting of the font in the playlist window is very easy.

Select from the menu Options->Preferences->Playlist;
clear the checkbox at Use skin or language pack font;
in the dropdown list Use font select "Cyrial".
Screenshot (4 KB)

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"Classic" skins

The Classic skins are those from the old version 2. Some of them are pretty good and Winamp supports them (they say it is lighter and faster). Here is how to set the Cyrillic font in the main window.

Select from the menu Options->Preferences->Classic skins;
clear the checkbox at Use skinned font for main window title display.
Screenshot (6 KB)

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"Modern" skins

Modern skins are beautiful, can be semi-transparent and can have different color themes, but they use more CPU. Here is how to set the Cyrillic font in the main window.

Select from the menu Options->Preferences->Modern skins;
select the tab Font rendering;
clear the checkbox at Use FreeType internal TTF rendering;
clear the checkbox at Use Alternate fonts if the skins defines them;
clear the checkbox at Allow use of bitmap fonts that have not been mapped;
clear the checkbox at Keep bitmap font in strings that contain only 7-bit;
at Replace with select "Cyrial";
clear the checkbox at Use FreeType internal TTF rendering;
at Default / Fallback select "Cyrial" again.

In short, clear all checkboxes (screenshot).

It should be done now. Happy listening!

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Download other skins

If you wish, you can download here some nice Winamp skins, all with a definition for the font Cyrial. Those are "Classic" skins, compatible with the versions 2 and 5.

They come from the free (as in freedom) program XMMS for GNU/Linux and are compatible with Winamp and are all very good (preview: blueheart, inverse).

11 skins in a big ZIP-archive (1.01 MB)
Base_skin_cyrial.wsz (72 KB) - this is the basic skin, usefull only for Winamp 2 (not included in the big archive)

You have to copy the downloaded skins in the folder C:\Program files\Winamp\Skins.

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What about Winamp 2?

If for some reason you cannot use Winamp 5, here is what to do for versions 2 (for example 2.91).

Install the font Cyrial.ttf (look above for details)
Follow the instructions for the "Classic" skins
Download the tweaked default skin (72 KB)
You can download all the other listed skins, they are all set for the font Cyrial.

Put the skins in the folder C:\Program files\Winamp\Skins.

Now you can select the new skin (Alt+S)!

How to Cyrillize your favorite skin? Here is how to set the font Cyrial for any "classic" skin. If you have Winamp 3 or 5, read above, those instructions are only for Winamp 2.

Only experienced people should do this. If you don't understand something, don't try this.

Find the file my_favorite_skin.wsz.
Rename it to my_favorite_skin.zip.
Right-click on the file and select Extract to "my_favorite_skin".
In the folder you will find a text file PLEDIT.TXT, double-click to open.
Find a line [Text] and after it, below, modify the line Font=something to Font=Cyrial. If there is no such line, add it.
Save the file with File-Save.

Compress again the folder to my_favorite_skin.zip, rename it to my_favorite_skin.wsz, and then, select it in Winamp (Alt+S).

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