Talk:Combinatorial map

Merger discussion: Combinatorial map, Map (graph theory), and Rotation system

It seems to me that this is the same notion as Map (graph theory) and one should consider merging the two pages. --Jérémie Bouttier — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E34:EC17:F710:284D:8B8F:68B2:EDE1 (talk) 08:08, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and have proposed merging them and Rotation system as well. Will Orrick (talk) 07:28, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that combinatorial map and rotation system are the same notion and should be merged! Regarding the article Map (graph theory), it is very short, but the paragraph there reads to me like an abstract description of the notion of map, without committing to how it is represented: whether by permutations as in a combinatorial map = rotation system, or by a topological graph embedding satisfying some conditions. However, I agree that in the current state Map (graph theory) does not deserve a separate article, and the best action would be to merge the small amount of material there into a single article on combinatorial maps. Noamz (talk) 08:37, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Combinatorial map and rotation system appear the same to me also.

As for map (graph theory), we also have articles on other different representations of such maps (at different levels of concreteness): ribbon graph and graph-encoded map. Therefore, I don't think it makes much sense to merge it into one of these specific representations, but it should mention all of these. —David Eppstein (talk) 10:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, now that you bring up these other articles, it makes sense to me to keep map (graph theory) on its own and have it link to all these representations. Come to think of it, I don't think there is much discussion on Wikipedia of map enumeration as a subfield of combinatorics, as surveyed for example in Gilles Schaeffer's chapter on "Planar maps" in the CRC Handbook of enumerative combinatorics. This enumerative perspective could be mentioned in the umbrella article (map (graph theory)) since much of it does not depend on a specific representation of maps. Noamz (talk) 11:57, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]