Implementation Question -- SL(2,C)

This is in followup to Patrick and Ping's postings in regard
to naming classical objects.

It's unclear to me whether we have a strong(ish?) disagreement here.
I'm certainly not in favor of *requiring* that authors name the
well-known objects of their papers.  This would be too much to expect,
in my opinion (no one expects the analogue in standard text, I imagine
a vast menuing system (probably equivalent to ZF) to classify "all"
objects, and do we expect to name the various non-standard models?  --
where do we stop?)

I do want to define an HTML-Math wherein authors are able to specify
such things if they wish.  My view of the project to date has been
that we are trying to define a language which will (a) render to the
various sensory media in such a way that a "knowlegeable" human can
interpret the notation properly, and (b) allow for paths by which
authors or other third parties may upgrade the notation to one
with fuller semantical attributes.  If this group has widely
diverging opinions on the degree to which semantics must be carried,
we'll probably have difficulty settling on a standard.

But do we differ in this?  Maybe not.  Ping's statement

> It makes the most sense for the conceptual entity "the complex numbers"
> to be represented by a separate named entity.  It is certainly *not* a
> variable named "C" in any sense -- and you would need it to be distinguished
> for it to be properly rendered to speech.

is much stronger than I would have said myself.  There actually is a
good sense (a formalist or nominalist sense) in which "the complex
numbers" are adequately represented by "C", and I'm fairly certain
that Raman reliably distinguishes this "C", as do those who read the
"C", by context.


-Ron