I wrote and Vladimir quieried

 s> Input (into TeX before typesetting) a table telling TeX how to
 s> interpret the characters >128 in the "West_European_and_Russian"
 s> 8-bit screen font.

 v> is this "West_European_and_Russian" a home-made encoding or it is more
 v> or less widely used?

It is terribly ad hoc so I am quite releived to find that
Leif for one will not need it first off.  But it does enable
bilingual WestEuropean&Russian TeX typing *systemwide* for
that encoding.

Laurent S.