I'm very happy to hear that it helps.
Also in VFP9 you can use FontCharSet property to properly display text on form or in editbox without changing the default language for non-Unicode programs.
Try this code:
_Screen.FontCharSet = 204
lcUtf8 = filetostr( 'russian_utf8.txt' )
lcRussian = strconv( SUBSTR(lcUtf8, 3), 11)
?lcRussian
WAIT WINDOW "IS it ok?"
lcUnicode = filetostr( 'russian_unicode.txt' )
lcRussian = strconv( SUBSTR(lcUnicode, 3), 6)
?lcRussian
WAIT WINDOW "IS it ok?"
_Screen.FontCharSet = 1
/A new technology turns into completely outdated stuff before you have a time to read "Getting Started..." section.
/If there are some "system programmers" then others are unsystematic.