Waldek, Ralf,

Although as I said, I do not like to call the map x+->[x,x] a
"coercion" (and it's associated "retraction") I have problems
justifying denying it formally.  It seems to satisfy all the
requirements as I understand them. (We've discussed the requirements
previously and there are some relevant pages on the Axiom wiki.) I
think that

  if R has SetCategory then FullyRetractableTo R

is true under our normal understanding of these terms and
FullyRetractableTo(R) exports coerce:R->%. Also as Ralf points out
there are other reasons why this coercion appears when R has even more
structure (such as a Ring). I think it would be difficult to avoid
this.

Perhaps there should be something else to obstruct the formation of
this unexpected product.

Gaby commented in the OpenAxiom thread on this subject that he thought
the problem might be overloading of *. Does it make sense to use the
symbol * to denote mulitiplication of a Matrix by a row vector
(DirectProduct)?

Regards,
Bill Page.

On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 7:50 AM, Waldek Hebisch
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Bill Page wrote:
>> Ralf,
>>
>> I think that the map
>>
>>    coerce : Fraction Polynomial Complex Integer -> %
>>
>> which is apparently  x+-> [x,x]
>>
>> in
>>
>> )sh DirectProduct(2,Fraction Polynomial Complex Integer)
>>
>> should not be called a coercion.
>
> Good spot.  AFAICS that coercion is defined because we have
>
>    if R has SetCategory then FullyRetractableTo R
>
> in DirectProductCategory.  IMHO this does not make sense.
> But before removing it one have to fix a few places in algebra
> (at least retract in SquareMatrix) where the retraction from direct
> product to scalars is used.
>
> --
>                              Waldek Hebisch
> [email protected]
>
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