[om] prefix in units_ops1

[Jacques Carette]

There is a more general, consistent meaning of the word 'prefix', which
perhaps should be defined at the meta-level ?

Something along the lines of:
This symbol represents the fact that the second argument (anything) has been
effectively and uniquely modified by the first argument (a prefix).

The notion of suffix is of course dual to this.  The units_ops1 could simply
specialize this definition to be "multiplication by a constant".

Or is this not the philosophy of OpenMath (abstraction + specialization) ?
Is it that OpenMath follows the "little theories" approach instead ?

Jacques

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-om at openmath.org [mailto:owner-om at openmath.org] On Behalf Of Bill
Naylor
Sent: September 24, 2003 3:07 AM
To: davidc at nag.co.uk; jhd at cs.bath.ac.uk
Cc: om at openmath.org
Subject: [om] prefix in units_ops1



Hi,

I am unhappy with the definition of the prefix symbol in units_ops1:

"prefix

This symbol represents the fact that the subsequent unit has been
effectively multiplied by 1,000 ($10^{3}$) "

This seems to me to be a particular application of prefix, viz. to the kilo
symbol. I think something much more along the lines of:

This symbol represents the fact that the second argument (a unit) has been
effectively multiplied by a constant specified by the first argument (a
prefix).


cheers,

Bill

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