Talk:Semiautomaton

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Socrates
Philosophy Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.

[edit] Merge from state transition system

I just got done writing the article on semiautomaton when I found the article on state transition systems, which is exactly the same thing. linas 03:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I defering a merge until I get a good book on this. There are a few subtle points I'll get wrong if I bullishly force this merge. linas 03:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that they should probably be merged. Although state transition system makes a point of saying that the input alphabets / state spaces can be infinite, certainly the same can be true for automata, semigroups and acts, and the like, as long as the word "finite" is not invoked. Incidentally, do you have any information about abelian semiautomata (i.e., the transformations commute)? Daveagp 20:52, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they should be merged, since there is a significantly different emphasis in the presentation and the usage. Many people I know talk all the time about labelled transition systems, for example in structural operational semantics, but would never talk about semiautomata, group actions etc.. I agree that there should be more linking between the two articles, though. I also propose to include at the head of this article (which redirects from transition system) the phrase saying "if you were looking for state transition systems, see ...". Sam Staton 19:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I concur. "Labelled transition systems are aguably the most fundamental model within theoretical computer science." Winskel et al. 1993, Models for Concurrency, chapter in Oxford Handbook of Logic and the Foundations of Computer Science. Semiautomata were not even mentioned, which suggests the two traditions had not yet even begun to merge just a little over ten years ago. Can you recommend a good source comparing the two? --Jrgetsin 04:25, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Is it OK to close the merge now, and leave the pages as they are for the time being? Sam Staton (talk) 09:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I removed the tag, for the time being.

A related suggestion: I think transition system should redirect to state transition system. And I'd then put a tag at the top of that page. Any objections? Sam Staton (talk) 07:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

No-one objected, so I've done this. Sam Staton (talk) 12:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC)