Subject: Re: xxx postings Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 11:35:42 -0500 From: Clarence Wilkerson This is intended for reposting to the mail-list: 1) I encourage authors to submit their work to other archives, including the ___ archives. I include a pointer on the Hopf page. 2) For whatever it's worth, there have been about 70 papers posted on Hopf since last December. A total of about 400 papers are available on Hopf. The archive has been in existence for about 6 years now. 3) I invite suggestions for improving Hopf's services. Output is currently available (assuming that DVI files were available) as PS, Laserjet, PDF, and DVI. DVI is the much preferred input for me, since it offers many output options. For the full rationale, please see the Hopf home page. Best, Clarence Wilkerson ____________________________________________ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 13:21:23 -0400 (EDT) From: James Stasheff Subject: Re: response re xxx Could it be that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? or more likely (Istill use a vi editor) that what we are familiar with is easier? without diparaging Hopf and especially the work of its maintainers, I have at most minor difficulty complying with xxx standards and then only when I don't read carefully it's resonably user friendly but chaqu'un a son gout! ************************************************************ Until August 10, 1998, I am on leave from UNC and am at the University of Pennsylvania Jim Stasheff jds@math.upenn.edu 146 Woodland Dr Lansdale PA 19446 (215)822-6707 Jim Stasheff jds@math.unc.edu Math-UNC (919)-962-9607 Chapel Hill NC FAX:(919)-962-2568 27599-3250 ________________________________________________ From: Greg Kuperberg Subject: Re: response re xxx Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:35:07 -0700 (PDT) > I suspect that algebraic topologists prefer to put their papers on the > Hopf archive rather than to conform to the inflexible xxx format > standards. I have just reviewed the submission instructions for both archives and I see no basis for saying that either has more flexible submission standards than the other. One only accepts DVI, the other only accepts TeX source for papers written in TeX. (However xxx does accept PS generated by other software as well as legacy DVI via archive migrations.) The relevant URLs are http://hopf.math.purdue.edu/pub/new-html/submissions.html http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/submissions.html I should also say that the reason that xxx requires TeX source is so that its can be as flexible and reliable as possible for people who *read* the archive. > I just think that this is probably the reason the AT count is so low. The xxx math advisory committee has now had negotiations with more than a dozen outside archives, with most agreeing to merge and some not. I can assure you that DVI-vs-TeX is a superficial issue, although it has gotten in the way on two or three occassions. What is true is that people get used to distributing their papers in particular ways, whether those ways are simple or awkward and whether they work well or not. People don't like to part with old shoes, old cars, and old habits of scholarly communication. In fact the most significant group of mathematicians are those who aren't distributing their papers electronically at all, neither by e-mail, nor on web pages, nor at Hopf. > I don't want to restart this argument. I don't think there ever was an "argument" in toplist. The math archive advisory committee invited Clarence Wilkerson to merge his archive, and he declined, and then we made some announcements to this mailing list, none of which elicited any further response from anyone who agrees (other than Carlos Simpson) or disagrees. I think you would be well-served to have an argument, or any other kind of substantive discussion, about the possible ways in which xxx might be useful to the algebraic topology community. The other driving force of scholarly communication, besides habit, is leadership. This is something that I can't provide since I'm not really part of your community. Greg ____________________________________________________- Subject: Re: categories: xxx preprint archive Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 11:05:31 -0700 From: Vaughan Pratt >Is it really true that algebraic geoemtry is flourishing that much better >than algebraic topology not to mention CT = category theory!! The number of submissions to xxx.lanl.gov seems more driven by culture than anything else. The following are the number of submissions for 1998 to date: Astrophysics: 2225 Condensed Matter 2272 + 10 more physics areas Mathematics (total) 932 Computation & Language 48 Evidently very few computer scientists think to submit to xxx.lanl.gov. I wouldn't infer from those numbers that computer science is not flourishing or publishing. As far as algebraic geometry vs category theory goes, the most recent 5 submissions in those respective areas span 1 week vs. 11 weeks, suggesting that the recent rate of submissions is closer to 11:1 than 221:1. (I'd have taken a larger sample if one had been as handy as the most-recent-5 statistic.) Vaughan Pratt ___________________________________________________ From: Greg Kuperberg Subject: Re: categories: xxx preprint archive Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:13:19 -0700 (PDT) A tecnical comment on Vaughan Pratt's message: Jim Stasheff should not have sent a common e-mail message to the categories mailing list, the mathematics archive advisory committee, and the category theory mailing list. Further messages that are sent to all three should NOT be forwarded to toplist by the moderator and responses should ONLY go to categories@mta.ca. (The toplist moderator and the advisory committee are getting blind carbon copies this time.) Greg _______________________________________________- Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:01:20 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Isbell Subject: Re: categories: xxx preprint archive Jim, There is something wrong (probably internal at xxx.lanl.gov) with your table of '98 abstracts in various branches of math. I went there (for the first time, thanks for the address) and clicked on Category Theory and found 5 abstracts. Those were all from the 3 months preceding this month, so I thought there should be more in '98. I did a search for the words 'category theory', limited to '98, and got 8 abstracts. However, more than half of those were classified, primarily, as Quantum Groups or something. So God only knows how many CT's there are in lanl in '98, but not less than 5. John