If you use Overleaf, you won’t even have to worry about putting them together, people can just work simultaneously in the document.

if we really want to be up to date, we should probably go beyond overleaf and use one of the LLama 2 APIs to generate latex. (a long long time ago someone tried to use overleaf on top of gpt3.5 and it was a little messy) BUT the fact that we all want to read *Lawvere's* lectures seems to be saying that some things in the past used to be more fun than some things in the future. so my vote would be to ask mike to organize the typesetting whichever way he is used to doing it, having organized it so many times :) -- dusko On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 12:49 PM Ben Webster <bwebste@gmail.com<mailto:bwebste@gmail.com>> wrote: If you use Overleaf, you won’t even have to worry about putting them together, people can just work simultaneously in the document. From: Michael Barr, Prof. <barr.michael@mcgill.ca<mailto:barr.michael@mcgill.ca>> Date: Wednesday, January 17, 2024 at 4:30 PM To: cmuster@gmx.net<mailto:cmuster@gmx.net> <cmuster@gmx.net<mailto:cmuster@gmx.net>>, categories@mq.edu.au<mailto:categories@mq.edu.au> <categories@mq.edu.au<mailto:categories@mq.edu.au>> Subject: Bill's Laval notes Let's suppose we can find a copy. Fatima has asked Danilo, who is dealing with Bill's paper, to look for it. Is there enough interest to support a retyping project? I would be willing to coordinate it, as I have done with a couple of other things not published in regular journals. The idea is to get enough people to type maybe 10 pages each, then I would put them together, get the LaTeX coordinated and post it somewhere, maybe as a TAC reprint. Michael You're receiving this message because you're a member of the Categories mailing list group from Macquarie University. To take part in this conversation, reply all to this message. View group files | Leave group | Learn more about Microsoft 365 Groups You're receiving this message because you're a member of the Categories mailing list group from Macquarie University. To take part in this conversation, reply all to this message. View group files<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=files&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27> | Leave group<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=leave&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27> | Learn more about Microsoft 365 Groups<https://aka.ms/o365g>

Great idea, Thomas! Very positive reaction over here, as you probably already knew. I think you guys did a great job putting Benabou's writings on the web (kudos to you!), but I think TAC reprints would be much more accessible and would help prevent people rediscovering the wheel! and it doesn't even use up more trees! Best, Valeria On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 12:09 PM <streicher@mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de> wrote:

I am also curious about the Laval notes by Lawvere. Dusko made this remark that some of the old stuff may be more fun to read. I do not want to comment on that but it could be that certain things had more charm when they were still fresh as in the 70s.

In this context I want to bring up the issue of retyping some old stuff of Benabou and alike which I have made accessible via my homepage some time ago with the help of my former student J. Weinberger. It is

Benabou's Montreal lectures (1974)

Benabou's Louvain-la-Neuve lectures (1980)

And the Theses of Celeyrette (197) and of Moens (1982)

as well as Chaper 1 of his never finished book Jon Fibered Categories (about 100 pages).

I noticed that there was quite some interest in particular among younger colleagues.

Therefore it might be worthwhile to save these things by publishing them as TAC reprints.

I am fully aware that Jean was a controversial figure in his days. But he also had quite some influence and his work on fibered categories is of lasting value.

So I think it would be a service to the community to save this work in particular because it was never formally published.

Hoping for a positive reaction, Thomas

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I am fully aware that Jean was a controversial figure in his days.

Could you indicate what controversy this was?

It started before I got into categorical circles in the mid 80s. Some of its traces can be found on the categories list. One of the visible expressions is Jean's 1985 JSL article where he devotes 2 pages explaining why his work was superior to the one of Par'e and Schumacher in a way much more explicit than usual. As I understand it he presented his work 1974 in lectures of at Montreal. A couple of years later Pare and Schumacher came up with their long article phrasing things in the language of indexed cats. Jean complained about certain defects of the latter approach. But as I understand he was essentially upset that they published his material before him. But he definitely was a perfectionist and the writing of the book was never finished. That is the impression of a person who was not involved those days and just knows things from rumour and what people said. I know Jean as a very polite person but also that under certain circumstances he could easily "explode". I heard him talk the first time at Logic Colloquium in Firenze in 1982 where he gave a very condensed version of his later JSL article including the controversy. I noticed that there was an obvious tension in the room. But I didn't care and rather got curious about fibered categories. I received very early a copy of Roisin's handwritten notes which I read with great delight. Over the years I got into it more and more and finally when asked to lecture on it in Munich in 1999 I strated to prepare some notes for myself in order to not forget about material which was not easily available. For me it is an indispensible tool for doing category theory over arbitrary base toposes. Your question shows that a younger generation of category theorists is not aware of those things. In a sense this is good so and normal since it allows to look at things in a more objective way. But since this material was never really published and the copies I provided are not of the best quality (see https://www2.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~streicher/FibCatTexts/) I think it would be a service to the community to have them available in more readable form. Whether it is necessary to translate them I am not so sure. In any case I am not interested in heating up an old and by now dead conflict. My intention just is to preserve important work for future generations since I found reading it most delightful. I was told to make an official submission but could not find any form for that. Rather have the impression that these things are decided by some responsible board. It is their decision but it might be helpful to express on the cat-list whether one is interested in the preservation of this material. Just to find out whether it is worth the effort to retype those things. Thomas You're receiving this message because you're a member of the Categories mailing list group from Macquarie University. To take part in this conversation, reply all to this message. View group files<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=files&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27> | Leave group<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=leave&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27> | Learn more about Microsoft 365 Groups<https://aka.ms/o365g>

Dear Colleagues, The works of Jean Bénabou and other pioneers of category theory deserve to be preserved. I'm very grateful to Thomas for taking the first steps toward to facilitate such a preservation, by making kindly these manuscripts available on his web site. Thomas's work to popularise the ideas of Jean Bénabou, through his many notes on fibred categories, distributors, etc. have also been very influential to me. I applaud any further efforts toward retyping and publishing of reprints as well — the existing TAC reprints (e.g. of Lawvere and others) have been invaluable for me as a researcher in the youngest generation trying to pick up the pieces of category theory from the 'space age' that might otherwise be forgotten by people my age if not for the efforts of our colleagues to preserve them. There's been too many times when I learned something first from a 'modern' source, perhaps filtered through the viewpoint of logicians and computer scientists, only to find that the primary source contains a much more comprehensive and satisfactory account. Taking up the challenge of preserving and making more accessible the old manuscripts will also do a lot to combat the perceived dominance of folklore in category theory. If there's anything I can do to support this work (including typesetting!), I'm at your service. Thanks, Jon On Fri, Jan 19, 2024, at 11:34 AM, Thomas Streicher wrote:

...

...

I am fully aware that Jean was a controversial figure in his days.

Could you indicate what controversy this was?

It started before I got into categorical circles in the mid 80s. Some of its traces can be found on the categories list.

One of the visible expressions is Jean's 1985 JSL article where he devotes 2 pages explaining why his work was superior to the one of Par'e and Schumacher in a way much more explicit than usual.

As I understand it he presented his work 1974 in lectures of at Montreal. A couple of years later Pare and Schumacher came up with their long article phrasing things in the language of indexed cats. Jean complained about certain defects of the latter approach. But as I understand he was essentially upset that they published his material before him. But he definitely was a perfectionist and the writing of the book was never finished.

That is the impression of a person who was not involved those days and just knows things from rumour and what people said.

I know Jean as a very polite person but also that under certain circumstances he could easily "explode".

I heard him talk the first time at Logic Colloquium in Firenze in 1982 where he gave a very condensed version of his later JSL article including the controversy. I noticed that there was an obvious tension in the room. But I didn't care and rather got curious about fibered categories. I received very early a copy of Roisin's handwritten notes which I read with great delight. Over the years I got into it more and more and finally when asked to lecture on it in Munich in 1999 I strated to prepare some notes for myself in order to not forget about material which was not easily available. For me it is an indispensible tool for doing category theory over arbitrary base toposes.

Your question shows that a younger generation of category theorists is not aware of those things. In a sense this is good so and normal since it allows to look at things in a more objective way.

But since this material was never really published and the copies I provided are not of the best quality (see https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/W-TlCJyBZ6tYLx8QfVWj1R?domain=mathematik.t...)

I think it would be a service to the community to have them available in more readable form.

Whether it is necessary to translate them I am not so sure.

In any case I am not interested in heating up an old and by now dead conflict. My intention just is to preserve important work for future generations since I found reading it most delightful.

I was told to make an official submission but could not find any form for that. Rather have the impression that these things are decided by some responsible board. It is their decision but it might be helpful to express on the cat-list whether one is interested in the preservation of this material. Just to find out whether it is worth the effort to retype those things.

Thomas

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