[Om3] binary vs n-ary relations

[Paul Libbrecht]

Le 25-sept.-08 à 11:14, Jan Willem Knopper a écrit :

>>> Chris Rowley wrote:
>>> I would assume a rel b rel c is almost the same as a rel b and b  
>>> rel c
>>> (where rel is a relation).
>> I would claim that it is EXACTLY the same (and therefore  
>> redundant). I do
>> not know where it conveys different information, and if it does, it
>> certainly needs documenting, so Michael's "making them n-ary" doesn't
>> work.
> ...
>> As I said, I'm not sure I understand why you would want the  
>> SEMANTICS of
>> this, as I am not sure what they are.
> You have convinced me.
>
> There are no obvious semantics differences here, and I am not sure
> enough that I actually need anything like the semantics of a formula
> manipulation.

I think the ball is on your side Jan Willem... many users and user- 
guides (e.g. teachers) will want something to look like a<b<c and  
other such...

- how are you going to offer this to users ? (e.g. wiris input editor  
does it by reparsing the mathml-p)
- how are you going to express the underlying OpenMath (as above I  
suppose)

I think the first question is crucial and needs an elaborate answer  
much further than "just apply this symbol here" as is done with most  
"simple application symbols".
It probably is a general issue of binary operators.

paul
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