John Baez takes exception to my excluding braids from asking about commutative diagrams syntax. Why? Would you take exception if I put out a general enquiry about topology and said I was specifically interested in applications to computer science rather than analysis? You know perfectly well what kind of diagrams we are talking about, and I am asking you (those of you who draw such diagrams, which, I guess, is more or less everyone on this list) how to express them in ascii. Moreover I defend my use of the words "novel" and "peculiar". I have seen thousands of "commutative" diagrams and know what the idiom is, and have developed a TeX macro package which has an input and output graphical language matching this idiom. I know conceptually what braids are, but I have not seen enough diagrams of them to know what the idiom is. Previously when we got on to this topic and I had no response besides counterexamples I made a public invitation to propose an ascii idiom but had no useful response. I have no wish to denigrate knot theory, but I would like members of the community to apply their minds to the question which has been asked ... Paul ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++