A suggestion concerning the future of OEIS.

[Antti Karttunen]

Itse kirjoitin:

> The format for submissions would be as strict as it is now
> (no free format text-messages, and maybe even stricter
> with regards to formulas, g.f.'s and program code, possibly allowing
> auto-generation of the terms on the fly), and the system would still
> allot a globally unique A-number for each accepted submission.
>
> If each sequence would be kept under a source control system
> like SCCS or such, the system would have a log of all the
> changes made to each entry. (Or maybe in a special database
> allowing easy storing and retrieval of the integer sequence data).

On the second thought, it would be better to forget the database
software (e.g. a SQL-variant like Postgres) (except maybe for
the transparent caching/indexing of the data for speedier retrieval),
and instead store the data in a specially designed XML-implementation,
and use MathML for representing all the formulas
and the identities listed. For example, concerning the various
comments and identities given at OEIS, it is often
unclear what's their credibility. In XML we could define
for each a special tag with values like
O = Obvious, C = Conjecture, P = Proved, with the
additional tag giving the name and the year of the
prover/proof. (e.g. "Euclid, ca bc. 325")

About Extensible Markup Language see   http://www.w3.org/XML/
and about MathML see                            http://www.w3.org/Math/



Tervehtien,

Antti Karttunen