User talk:Lord Farin

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Well-Ordering Minimal Elements are Unique
Good call. I looked myself, but couldn't find it. Good call. --prime mover 00:23, 11 October 2011 (CDT)

Euler-Binet
Superb job on Euler-Binet Formula (that induction step eluded me for years - I'm a mediocre mathematician). I have a minor worry concerning the Binet Form which I originally got wrong $\Delta = \sqrt{m^2 + 1}$ but I'm now looking at MathWorld and it has $\Delta = \sqrt{m^2 + 4}$. What's your source for $\Delta = \sqrt{4 m^2 + 1}$? --prime mover 12:03, 14 October 2011 (CDT)
 * I will conform to MathWorld. I just attempted to think of a formula that appeared plausible, and came up with this; probably one of my bad habits. Glad the issue is resolved anyway. --Lord Farin 12:09, 14 October 2011 (CDT)

Foldable editor
Hey, that rocks. --prime mover 14:18, 19 October 2011 (CDT)

Extension
If you're interested, maybe we could turn the foldable template into a extension, so we could have something like: some lemma

If it works out well maybe even extend it to a general proofs. This should allow for a more customized environment. Let me know if your're interested / think it's a good idea. --Joe (talk) 06:37, 21 October 2011 (CDT)
 * I'm not quite sure what there is to improve by making this transition. In my opinion, we'd best keep structuring the pages quite simple. But, if you have a mind-blowing improvement in mind, I have a willing ear. At this point however, I am not sure what your point is. --Lord_Farin 09:34, 21 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Yeah, I didn't describe that very well. So what I've been thinking of developing for while, but have been to lazy to do, is a MediaWiki extension for ProofWiki. Basically this would include any features we want to add to ProofWiki that MediaWiki doesn't have. So for instance, your foldable sections could be used in a much broader sense. For instance we could have multiple parser tags such as: proof, lemma, etc. Lemma could have a default setting to automatically be hidden. Say you want to hide a proof (for some reason), you would wrap your proof inside  .... tags. Basically not just an extension for hiding page elements, but to improve functionality beyond what's currently available. Essentially to improve the way we present mathematics. Lets hope this makes sense. --Joe (talk) 10:02, 21 October 2011 (CDT)

I see where you are going. Users could specify that proofs never should be hidden, the frequent onlyinclude tags could be reworked to, when absent, automatically use the part of the page within the theorem tag... The possibilities are limitless. I could aid in developing this; however, I deem myself not such a virtuoso that I could do it on my own. Maybe we could start a discussion about what desired functionality the extension should have; such to prevent ambitious and not really necessary or desired functionality. The core should always be that it makes writing and reading theorems and proofs on PW easier. --Lord_Farin 11:46, 21 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Agreed, lets see what Prime.mover thinks --Joe (talk) 12:21, 21 October 2011 (CDT)
 * (wakes up) ... ooerr, wassup? urrr ...
 * Making reading the theorems easier should be no. 1 priority. To that end, I have tried to create a consistent style (but can't take full credit because there was considerable input from others).
 * Rules of thumb:
 * a) We could aim for a rigorous one-definition-per-file, one-theorem-per-file, one-proof-per-file system. I am working through stuff now (you've probably noticed) re-treading the exercise to plunder the books, and pages where there are multiple definitions have had the sub-defs factored out into separate, but transcluded, pages. Theorems are more variable: sometimes it is the statement of the theorem which is onlyincluded, and sometimes it's the proof. The latter happens when there are multiple proofs for the same theorem, the former when there multiple theorems have somehow accumulated (through similarity of subject matter) in the same page (see Trigonometrical Identities and Subset Equivalences for example). This is not completely universal - stuff still needs to be hauled out and refactoried - but it's in progress.
 * b) One of the awkward aspects of the evolved format is the aesthetic appearance of having two blank lines at the end of each section, so there's a wide white gap in between. Now, when you edit a section on its own, rather than editing the whole page, when you save it, it loses one of those two lines so you need to edit the whole page again to add the second line.
 * That's two things. Now if we could start a template, and a  and a  and a  etc. template, we could formalise the structure of a) and include by default the issue raised as b).
 * I'm not sure where to start with this, in order not to make the entry of proofs more fiddly and less intuitively obvious (we already have some hopeless cases who can't even work out how to put a heading in place, so getting them to follow rather more esoteric technique of entering everything via a less-than-universally understood template will be difficult to say the least. Once most of the pages are in the standardly templated formats, then there will at least be something to follow - but with the thick end of 10000 pages to edit this is going to be a long job - and it's barely 6 months since the last smoking-fingers marathon.
 * Try something out, see where you get to, and we can see what it looks like. The folding lemma template was a triumph. --prime mover 14:18, 21 October 2011 (CDT)