Dear Laurent,

> How do you account for the presence of single Guillemets in
> cp1251?

We don't use single , ` ' < > signs at all, only double ,, `` << >>.

> How do you account for the absence of ,,text`` from all of KOI8
> and the presence of ``text''.  Culural osmosis?

In DOS:                      we use "text";
sometimes programmers use 'and' for inner text, when it is necessary to
explicitely show the nesting.
The unix programmers may use '', "", `` for shell-like specific needs in
hackerese, but these are outside of our discussion.
In Russian WinWord:     we type "text" and WinWord automatically changes
them to corresponding opening and closing double signs which are absent on
the keyboard, but exist in cp1251;
and ctrl`+", ctrl'+" do the same with English.
In TeX:                       we type <<text ,,intext`` outtext>>.

\bye
Mikhail Kolodin, mailto:myke@mail.ru, http://myke.da.ru, ICQ#10895085,
2:5030/207.16@FidoNet