deciding whether the involution on a category should be written as a dagger or as a star sounds to me a bit like deciding whether a polynomial should be in x or in y. i worked with people who use the dagger, and didnt work with people who use the star, but it would be good if i could keep my options open. but anyway, denoting the math structures by the typographic symbols used in them sounds like an amusing idea. after a hundred years of progress in creating new structures, and metafonting new symbols for them, we'll probably be in possession of a fairly rich new language of hieroglyphs. -- dusko John Baez wrote:
[snip]
I hope this is clear: "dagger-categories" are completely different from "compact closed categories". We need *some* term for them; we're just arguing about whether to call them "star-categories", "dagger-categories", or "categories with involution". I like "star-categories", because in analysis and quantum topology the special case of "C*-categories" is very important. But, I doubt we'll reach any sort of agreement!
Best, jb