Russian on //c: GUI, fonts, how?

[armagon@my-deja.com (Armagon)]

I want to be able to type in Russian on my Apple //c.  I don't have a printer
that works with it directly, but I can transfer files and disk images back and
forth between the //c and my Pentium II.

OK, I am just somewhat scared to probe into this question.  It has been quite
some time since I have done any programming on the //c, and then most of it
was in AppleSoft.  

I don't imagine that it is possible to rewrite the images of characters to 
the character buffer so that Cyrillic letters could be displayed on the text
screen, is it?  (BTW, if this is possibly, could I change the character buffer,
load up AppleWorks, and somehow enter in extended codes?)

Which means graphics, right?  Are there any suitable GUIs out there?  Would
I have to create what I need from scratch?  If so, am I better off creating
a bitmap font, a vector one using shape tables, or something else?

How much of a headache would trying to add colour be?  How about trying to 
use double hi-res graphics?  (Is there a version of basic I can legally 
download that supports double hi-res?)

Oh yeah.  Would I need to make my own string routines?  If I was to match my
font to Windows CP-1251, which uses all 256 ASCII codes, would I have problems
with normal string routines setting the most significant bit high, making
it difficult to tell apart what is encoded in English and what is encoded in
Russian?

Is there anything else that I should know about concerning this?  Are there 
any commercial products or other things hobbyists have done?  Are there any
free downloads?


Well, I hope that that is it.  Thank you so much for your time,
Armagon