Re: babel/3740: wrong \englishhyphenmins

Greetings,

"ГИН" == Голубев Илья Н writes:

 ГИН> Just after starting `latex' `\show\englishhyphenmins' prints:
 ГИН> \englishhyphenmins=\relax.

 ГИН> That is, even freshly initialized latex contains
 ГИН> `\englishhyphenmins' command definition that can not be
 ГИН> processed properly while processing `\English' command defined
 ГИН> by `\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}'.  The latter command
 ГИН> always fails.

 ГИН> How do we ensure that `\englishhyphenmins' in latex defined
 ГИН> properly and `\English' command works?

This is a "bug" in russianb.ldf. Please change the 3 lines there:

\ifx\englishhyphenmins\undefined
  \def\englishhyphenmins{\tw@\thr@@}
\fi

to one line:

\providehyphenmins{english}{\tw@\thr@@}

Another note, the \English command (and \Russian too) defined in
russianb.ldf is "deprecated" and should not be used (also,
english-related stuff will be removed from russianb.ldf).

Instead, use the standard babel commands and environments for
switching language (otherlanguage, foreignlanguage, selectlanguage,
etc).

Best,
v.