[Axiom-developer] Re: Combinat

[Ralf Hemmecke]

> The MuPad-Combinat link is broken.

Thanks. But I think that is a problem of the MuPAD-Combinat people. I've
forwarded the broken link message.

Yes, it's a shame. The abstract of Aldor-Combinat is much too short. And
the introduction section does not explain anything useful. But that is
the reason why we have no official release yet. We are still at 0.0.3
but develop in the public. I hope at 0.1.0 we will have something that
can be better understood. But it seems that I am the only person who
will do this.

> 34 sections of documentation. From browsing around I can infer that a
> "species" is somehow related to sets. However, I can find no
> definition of what a species is.

Oh, yes, you could have found it.
http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/people/hemmecke/AldorCombinat/combinatsu14.html#x27-320008.1
But you are right. The information is not properly organised.
However, if instead of the html documentation you would have read the
.dvi documentation, you would certainly have used your search button of
your viewer. On our html presentation one would go to the "Index"
section, look for "combinatorial species" and press on the red number
(which lead to the definition of "combinatorial species").

But again, your feedback helps. Since it tells me that it is not so
obvious to look through the index.

> Perhaps this is related to the point-set topology structures? I
> cannot tell.

I cannot tell, either.

> Perhaps an "overview of the theory" section might help.

I'll do some restructuring this summer.

> Something  like: <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Species.html>

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_species is much better.

Thank you
Ralf