I am sorry to say that this really looks like the INF of the standard Times-Roman font that does not have cyrillic glyphs (and the same was true of your log file).
Yes, Taco, you are right. I was muddled by Extensis Suitcase which displayed Cyrillic text in a font preview mode (probably, substituted?). The font (tir_____.pfb) itself doesn't contain any Cyrillic glyphs, indeed. Thanks a lot for your point.
I've abandon the Adobe font and installed Times-Roman from the collection located at at http://freshmeat.net/projects/urw-fonts-cyrillic. Texfont has performed its job excellent and now I'm able to typeset Russian. (The filenames for Times-Roman are n021003l.afm, n021004l.afm, n021023l.afm and n021024l.afm)
However, now that Russian seems OK I have stuck with Ukrainian. Despite the fact that this font DOES contain all Ukrainian-specific glyphs (Ie, I, and Yi; if you never saw them then see http://www.alanwood.net/demos/wgl4.html), They cause errors and are replaced by wrong symbols in the output pdf file.
My test script is the following
...........................................
\loadmapfile[t2a-urw-timescyr.map]
\font\myfirstfont=t2a-n021003l
\myfirstfont
\starttext
Hello world!
Привет, мир!
Добрий день, свiтове!
Ukrainian-specific letter are {ЄєIiЇї}
% \showcharacters
\stoptext
And the log file is
....................................
This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.30.6-2.2 (MiKTeX 2.5) (preloaded format=cont-en 2006.12.25) 27 DEC 2006 00:50
entering extended mode
**test7timescyr.tex \emergencyend
(test7timescyr.tex
ConTeXt ver: 2006.07.14 12:08 fmt: 2006.12.25 int: english mes: english
language : language en is active
13->2:3 cz->il2:il2->14->2:3 cz->ec:ec->15->2:3 sk->il2:il2->16->2:3 sk->ec:ec ->17->2:3 pl->pl0:pl0->18->2:3 pl->ec:ec->19->2:3 pl->qx:qx->20->2:3 loaded specials : tex,postscript,rokicki loaded system : test7timescyr.top loaded (D:\~~\test7timescyr.top specials : loading definition file tpd (E:\MiKTeX\tex\context\base\spec-tpd.tex specials : loading definition file fdf (E:\MiKTeX\tex\context\base\spec-fdf.tex) specials : fdf loaded ) specials : fdf,tpd loaded ) systems : system commands are disabled (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (E:\MiKTeX\tex\context\base\sort-def.tex) (E:\MiKTeX\tex\context\base\sort-lan.tex) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) (D:\~~\test7timescyr.tuo) systems : begin file test7timescyr at line 12 Missing character: There is no ? in font t2a-n021003l! Missing character: There is no к in font t2a-n021003l! Missing character: There is no ? in font t2a-n021003l! fonts : resetting map file list fonts : using map file: lm-texnansi fonts : using map file: original-base fonts : using map file: ec-public-lm fonts : using map file: ec-base fonts : using map file: 8r-base fonts : using map file: t5-base fonts : using map file: original-ams-base fonts : using map file: original-ams-euler fonts : using map file: original-public-lm fonts : using map file: t2a-urw-timescyr (E:\MiKTeX\tex\context\base\pdfr-ec.tex) [1.1{original-empty.map}{lm-texnansi.m ap}{original-base.map}{ec-public-lm.map}{ec-base.map}{8r-base.map}{t5-base.map} {original-ams-base.map}{original-ams-euler.map}{original-public-lm.map}{t2a-urw -timescyr.map}] systems : end file test7timescyr at line 24 system : cont-err loaded (E:\MiKTeX\tex\context\base\cont-err.tex
User file 'cont-sys.tex' not found, 'cont-sys.rme' has been used instead. <
Best regards, Vyatcheslav (A happy user of MikTeX 2.5.)