Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
It just sounds like quite a lot to ask from Russian pensioners and other computer users who are not familiar with English OR computers...
Guess the situation lacks symmetry. First, Russian symbols, though look similar to Latin alphabet and are partially based on it, differ from English for the most part. You may use transliteration, of course, but to type in Russian you must use a Russian layout.
Second, people in UK/US/CA/AU/EU/wherever may not bother lerning cyrillic writing, but people in Russia can and will write and read Latin characters. If someone had't got foreign laguage lessons in early elementary school, they are going to learn it all anyway in math classes, like in 4th grade. Yeah, we don't name variables and X's in cyrillic.
Foreign words and Latin characters are used everywhere, even just for the cool look of it, so you may very well say there little if any users in Russia who are not familiar with characters other than cyrillic. Even past the age of retirement. Hell, the MP3player I got wo weeks ago is by EXPLAY, and as I have come to know, that's actually a Russian company.