Re: The Wikibook on Category Theory

[Urs Schreiber <urs.schreiber@googlemail.com>]

On 8/18/09, Michael Shulman <shulman@math.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> I love the nLab too, but I'm not sure that "merging" is the right
>  word; probably the two are serving slightly different purposes.  The
>  overall nLab is not really organized like a textbook or designed to be
>  read linearly; writing a textbook requires additional thought.  But
>  there is certainly no reason why the two can't share material and link
>  to each other as appropriate.

I agree. Maybe "merging the effort" wasn't a good choice of words, but
when I saw the wikibook I had the strong impression that there were
similar intentions here to a large piece of the nLab and I thought it
should be useful and easy to transfer content and join forces where
reasonable and desirable.

>  And/or one could choose to write a
>  textbook as a section of the nLab rather than on Wikibooks (if, for
>  instance, one preferred its offerings in the way of mathematical
>  typesetting).

Yes, that sounds like an interesting idea. Another advantage might be
a greater and easier supply of cross-hyperlinks, either way.

In any case, there are many category-theoretic entries (and not just
those) on the nLab -- existing ones and not-yet existsing ones --
where I would find more textbook-style material highly desireable.

Best,
Urs


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