On 8/18/09, Michael Shulman <shulman@math.uchicago.edu> wrote:
I love the nLab too, but I'm not sure that "merging" is the right word; probably the two are serving slightly different purposes. The overall nLab is not really organized like a textbook or designed to be read linearly; writing a textbook requires additional thought. But there is certainly no reason why the two can't share material and link to each other as appropriate.
I agree. Maybe "merging the effort" wasn't a good choice of words, but when I saw the wikibook I had the strong impression that there were similar intentions here to a large piece of the nLab and I thought it should be useful and easy to transfer content and join forces where reasonable and desirable.
And/or one could choose to write a textbook as a section of the nLab rather than on Wikibooks (if, for instance, one preferred its offerings in the way of mathematical typesetting).
Yes, that sounds like an interesting idea. Another advantage might be a greater and easier supply of cross-hyperlinks, either way. In any case, there are many category-theoretic entries (and not just those) on the nLab -- existing ones and not-yet existsing ones -- where I would find more textbook-style material highly desireable. Best, Urs [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]