From: Greg Kuperberg <greg@math.ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Re: Simpson on htpy gps
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 19:32:42 +73600 (PST)

Carlos Simpson:
> Although I haven't had time to look up Justin Smith's paper, judging
> from the title ``Iterating the cobar construction'', that must be what
> he says. Thus, I now feel that there is nothing at all new in my note,
> but if anybody wants to look at it it is on q-alg/9710011 (my apologies
> to Clarence, I also didn't know about Hopf at the time).

Here I can make a separate point unrelated to the complexity theory
discussion, if still related to computers.  Although regrettably there
is still little direct interaction between Hopf and the xxx mathematics
archive, I think I can safely say that the atmosphere of competition
is gone, and that the discussions between xxx (as represented by Jim
Stasheff, a member of the advisory committee) and Hopf (as represented
by Clarence Wilkerson of course) are at least friendly.  So I would say
that it's silly to apologize to Clarence for putting a paper in xxx.

To the contrary, the paper q-alg/9710011 is a good test case for
possible future cooperation.  Given that it is a paper in algebraic
topology, it should be cross-listed to the AT (Algebraic Topology)
category using the usual xxx cross-listing mechanism.  And whether
or not that is done, Clarence should feel free to list, or even copy
and mirror, any germane papers in the xxx mathematics archive in Hopf.
The simplest first step is that an e-mail message of the form "I would
like to submit math.AT/1234567 to Hopf" should suffice for submission
to Hopf, since Hopf papers are installed by hand and the dvi is in such
cases retrievable with a URL such as:

   http://xxx.lanl.gov/dvi/math.AT/1234567

Moreover, it is not clear that such a request should even be necessary,
since people can see for themselves what the algebraic topology papers
in xxx are without any e-mail from the authors, and it would make sense
to list them as Hopf papers also.

By way of example, this is exactly what the Banach Spaces archive does;
it is a successful hybrid of an independent archive and a service that
lists xxx excerpts.  Indeed, I am grateful that Banach Spaces chose
to list one of my own papers (math.MG/9811119), since that's where
several of its most interested readers found it.

                        Greg