From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5768 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dusko Pavlovic Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: autonomous terminology: WAS: bilax monoidal functors Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 11:38:05 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Dusko Pavlovic NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1273443096 27751 80.91.229.12 (9 May 2010 22:11:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 22:11:36 +0000 (UTC) To: categories Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Mon May 10 00:11:35 2010 connect(): No such file or directory Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OBEih-00080y-Dh for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 10 May 2010 00:11:31 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1OBEGh-0000ho-BF for categories-list@mta.ca; Sun, 09 May 2010 18:42:35 -0300 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5768 Archived-At: > By the way: I don't remember anyone on this mailing list ever asking if > their own terminology is good. I only remember them complaining about other > people's terminology. I applaud your departure from this unpleasant > tradition! to support this departure, i have a terminology question. last couple of years *dagger monoidal* and *dagger compact* categories came to be popular. in a recent paper i encountered lots of star autonomous categories with an additional dagger structure. i am reluctant call them dagger star autonomous categories, because it is a mouthful. moreover it seems that listing the operations of a signature in its name is a bad naming strategy. trying to maintain descriptive names is a lost cause. linguists have known that languages are not descriptive since XIX century. mathematicians since much earlier, even since they started calling everything x and y. we never try to give cars or people descriptive names, only mathematical structures. a new chemical element is given an ugly descriptive name only until a simpler one is agreed upon. i was going to call them *dagger autonomous* but peter selinger pointed out that this is confusing. indeed, the term *autonomous* has established a confusing tradition all on its own: * i believe that fred linton introduced it in the 60s for what would now probably be called *closed* structure * barr followed linton's usage with his star autonomous categories. there are 10s of 1000s of papers using this terminology (eg from the linear logic times). * on the other hand, joyal and street called autonomous those categories where every object has a monoidal dual. that terminology also caught on. so now, what should we call those "dagger star autonomous categories" if we don't want to type 30 characters each time we mention them? peter suggests DSA-categories. (maybe someone will abbreviate them to D-categories...) help appreciated. -- dusko PS maybe we should rename dagger monoidal to pink monoidal, and star autonomous to floyd, so dagger star autonomous categories would be pink floyd categories. is there any reason why words should be taken seriously? [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]