typing and printing in Russian in a western machine

[Carlos Carvalho <carlos@fisica.ufpr.br>]

Hi,

This is likely a FAQ, but I didn't find one for this list, and didn't
find answers in other FAQs. I`ll look in the archives of the mailing
list, but it`d be good if you could also CC me because I`m not
subscribed.

We have visiting professors from Russia that want to type and print
texts in Russian. I'm having difficulty to configure a Debian system
to permit this. The Russian configuration should be reversible by the
user, so it`s not possible to modify system files accessible only to
root like the XF86Config.

At first I expected that it`d be enough to install cyrillic fonts,
locales, set the environment vars and a xmodmap, but it didn`t work.
We have Cyrillic fonts installed (it's possible to read Russian in
netscape without any special configuration). I also installed the
ru_RU ISO-8859-5 locale. My questions are:

1) How to configure for typing? I tried an xmodmap file but it doesn`t
   switch modes permanently, in spite of being supposed to do so.
   Where can I find a working xmodmap? I can`t use xkb. Also, this is
   XFree 3.3.6.

2) How can applications display and accept Russian? Is it enough to
   set the locale and LANG? Will it work for all applications? I tried
   an xterm with a cyrillic font and the xmodmap, and managed to type
   a few cyrillic chars. However it didn`t work with emacs.

3) What about printing? Does gs need some specific fonts?

If there`s a recipe for all the above please tell me. Thanks in
advance.