"HH" == Hans Hagen writes: >> note that some pattern files also set \lefthyphenmin and >> \righthyphenmin.
HH> i guess that this is done because of the constraints they were HH> generated in; not necessarily. one could say that "good defaults" the hyphenmins are known for at least some languages, and thus e.g. ruhyphen stored them in the pattern files, and babel's behavior was such that it obeyed whatever hyphenmin values were set by pattern files, and it worked even when the *.ldf file did not contain the providehyphenmins command. Best, v.
