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	["1616" "Sun" "22" "June" "1997" "01:12:14" "+0100" "David Carlisle" "david@DCARLISLE.DEMON.CO.UK" nil "49" "Re: another problem with Russian typesetting" "^Date:" nil nil "6" nil nil nil nil nil]
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Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 01:12:14 +0100
From: David Carlisle <david@DCARLISLE.DEMON.CO.UK>
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Subject:      Re: another problem with Russian typesetting
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> \chardef\newCYRA=128
> \chardef\newCYRB=129
> \chardef\newCYRV=130
>
> $\cyrmathit{\newCYRA\newCYRB\newCYRV}$  % this works well

Are you sure that works?
\chardef'ed tokens always pick up the current *text* font, they do not
follow the \mathgroup (ie \fam) settings, unlike explicit or implicit
character tokens.


\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\mathchardef\xx`\e
\let\yy=f

$ \mathsf{abc d \xx\yy} abcd\xx\yy$

\end{document}



See \xx always makes a roman d, unlike \yy
which makes an e in the current math group (sans serif, or math italic
in the example)

A further complication for Cyrillic is that in order to reliably work
with math alphabets having different encodings, the LaTeX math
alphabet switches ought to leave more information about the current
encoding. Unlike the text font changes that do this, the \mathxxx
switches essentially just do a primitive \fam switch (after possibly
loading the font on demand) and do not leave any record of the current
alphabet and encoding in a form that may be easily tested. In other
words you want
$\cyrmathit{\newCYRA\newCYRB\newCYRV}$
to work, but $\newCYRA\newCYRB\newCYRV$ to generate a sensible
error rather than just putting primitive
Missing character: There is no ^^a4 in font cmr10!
messages in the log file.

Supporting encoding-specific commands in math mode *is* a reasonable
request, but it is something that latex does not currently do, and
adding it would likely need extensions to the basic math font handling
in the format, it is not something that can simply be added with a few
lines of package code, as far as I can see.

David