Semigroups and ordered categories. I: The reduced case (Q1177273)

Inverse semigroups can be described as groupoids (= small categories of isomorphisms) which are ordered in a special way. In particular, this order relation induces the structure of a semilattice on the set of idempotents of the groupoid. This idea can be generalized to regular semigroups. One has to consider a different type of inductive groupoid, where the idempotents acquire the structure of a regular biordered set. These known results and ideas serve as a starting point for the author. In this Part I of a longer paper main emphasis is on generalizing the above results on inverse semigroups. Groupoids are replaced by a more general kind of (ordered) categories.