Dear Anatoliy,

I wrote that

 LS>  The common-names and hexadecimal codes
 > in Windows 1251 encoding are:
 >
 >  double left guillemets  (<<)     "AB
 >  double right guillemets (>>)     "BB
 >  single left guillemet   (<)      "8B
 >  single right guillemet  (>)      "9B

You correctly answered that the latex tags are

 guillemotleft
 guillemotright
 guilsinglleft
 guilsinglright

These come from Adobe and the the first two
involve novel :=/ Adobe misspellings (mot <== met).

However contrary to what you say, guillemotleft and
guillemotright are not entirely absent from the variants of
code page (cp) 866.  In my copy of cyinpenc.dtx they are
present in the New Alternative Variant cp866nav at positions
"FD and "FE.

 guillemotleft         "FD
 guillemotright        "FE

Since you mention that cp866nav is state standard in the
Ukraine guillemotleft guillemotright definitely deserve
support.

By the bye, the Russian number symbol \CYRNo is present in
all variants of cp 866 (except cp866mav = "Modified
Altarnative Variant") and the location is "FC so it deserves
support too.

*Everything* I know about cp866 is 100% hearsay. Mistakes and
omissions are like flies on ripe fruit. I wish I
had ".gif" tables for cp 866 and variants; they make the
flies more obvious!

More comments?

Cheers,

            Laurent S

PS.  Any tentative answers to my other questions?