[seqfan] Re: Eventually-signed sequences

[franktaw at netscape.net]

Well, I didn't say that that was what I thought the policy should be, 
just that that is what it is. I didn't make the policy; Neil did.

My personal opinion is that these keywords should be removed. The 
program to process submissions can just as easily examine the sequence 
to see whether there are any negative terms -- to decide whether to add 
%V, %W, and %X lines -- and I don't see any other real use for them.

Franklin T. Adams-Watters

-----Original Message-----
From: Alonso Del Arte <alonso.delarte at gmail.com>

The policy as described by Franklin certainly makes it easy to handle
sequences for which we are not certain that they do or do not contain
negative numbers. Still, I think it would be better for the sign 
keyword to
apply even if no negative terms are "visible," and for sequences of 
unknown
status to go off the best thinking on the subject (e.g., in the case of
A086811, since H. Moller who wrote the paper cited for that sequence 
thinks
it contains no negative terms, it should be nonn rather than sign).

Just my two cents,
Al

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 7:28 PM, <franktaw at netscape.net> wrote:

> The policy has long been that the sequence should have the "sign"
> keyword if there are negative values entered in the sequence -- that
> is, in the %V, %W, and %X lines.  So your 85 examples below should be
> "nonn".  It looks like your 20 "nonn" sequences with negative values
> have them only in b-files or other extension, so they are correct.