Dear Michael Kolodin,

Thanks for the extensive reply!

 > 1) we have different encodings (alternative (cp866), windows
 > (cp1251), unix (koi8r), others),

It would be nice if these were each  just one and not a cloud
of variants.  Ah, at least cp1251 has no variants (right?)
and that may be one of its strengths.

 > usually Cyrillc chars are on the same keys as Latin, but
 > are colored red instead of black, the layout corresponds in
 > general to that of typewriter; some chars (~`\|/|?'",.;:@%)
 > exist, but are placed on different keys in Cyrillic and Latin
 > modes

Yes, I recall this hazily from my last trip to Russian in
1997. I wish I had taken a photo!  You don't have a keyboard
diagram image from documentation to pass on?

 > On my keyboard
 >     .\=-                         are typed directly,
 >     !"?;%:?*()_+/,         are typed using Shift,

These answers are for the Russian Cyrillic register. I was
in fact asking the same question for the English register or
programmer's register.  What there?

cheers,

Larry