[Om3] binary vs n-ary relations

[Chris Rowley]

Paul

> since OpenMath offers the freedom of defining a new notation "easily"  
> ...
> So a candid answer could be "just define a new symbol", e.g. an n-ary  
> equality symbol.

This is fine but it doies not address my fundamental question about
the whole process.

> > As with many parts of mathematics, exactly what is written with
> > non-text symbols and what is written using natural language (or
> > various mixtures, of course) is very arbitrary.
>
> > Jan's 'problem' is that he has to 'deal with' any notation that comes
> > ... but (and this is the real
> > strangeness) he is not expected to 'deal with' the many ideas
> > (equally expressable as OpenMath symbols, operators etc.) ...
> > that are always expressed purely in natural language, with no
> > symbols needed (used).

It is not clear to me why the current OpenMath CDs (OK, the ones I
have seen) deal only `with notation' and not with those mathematical
concepts that are abstractly equivalent to csymbols but are always
(in standard maths) referred to by natural language expressions.

Maybe this is only a problem for sets of CDs such as those from MathML
that are generated, at least partially, by the needs of mathematics
texts rather than Computer Algebra or programming.


chris

PS  I also wrote:

> > That this distinction is unnautural is well illustrated by the fact
> > that spoken maths does not make any distinction (almost:-) between the
> > two classes.

which means that the generation of Content MathML from the 'natural
spoken mathematical langauge'
will be difficult unless everything typically spoken in a 'K14
mathematical paragraph' can be encoded.

Hmmm, should I cross-post this.  Or maybe just ask for 'real world'
examples of documents containing 'useful Content MathML' and an
explanation of its uses?