On storage of topological information (Q1775626)

The paper under review complements a previous article of the author in [Nystrom et al. (Eds.), Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2886, (Springer, Berlin), 1--15 (2003)] in which a useful method for saving topological information was discussed. This paper contains a brief introduction to the topology used in the previous paper and a survey of topological results that the author has developed in a series of previous papers with the reviewer. After a short introduction which contains an explanation as to why the use of topological data in computing is justified, Section 2 is devoted to results concerning Alexandroff spaces and the specialization order. Section 3 contains a discussion of connected ordered topological spaces (otherwise known as COTS) and an explanation of how and why the computer screen should be represented as a product of COTS. Section 4 contains a survey of the mathematical techniques needed to study the approximation of compact Hausdorff spaces by finite spaces. A brief introduction to the theory of bitopological spaces is given here and many of the most important results in the field are cited. There is an interesting discussion justifying why a topological space should be viewed as the result of storing information regarding ever larger finite families of open sets.