[seqfan] Re: Eventually-signed sequences

[Alonso Del Arte]

So you're saying that nonn and sign no longer serve any purpose, either for
humans looking at the OEIS or for the computers handling the OEIS (whether
server-side or client-side)?

I think that if nothing else, those two keywords have value as a tradition.

Al

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 8:37 PM, <franktaw at netscape.net> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
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