A more logical structure has been given to the chapters on groupoids. Also
emphasis has been made on the notion of analogy: so we have chapters on `covering
spaces, covering morphisms', `orbit spaces, orbit groupoids'. The previous
edition had serious material on orbit spaces, but reviewers missed it partly
because it was put in that edition at the end of the chapter on covering spaces, to
make for an easier reprinting. However the latexing of the whole book
has allowed for substantial changes in organisation to be made relatively
easily.
Exposition
Numerous detailed corrections
and improvements to the exposition were made, and some additions,
resuting in a lengthening of the text.
For example, there is additional material on orbit groupoids.
Figures
All the figures have been redrawn, in order to produce eps files.
This has also enabled an improvement in the shading.
The e-version has many colour figures.
Fonts
This book is typeset using the math fonts given by the package
eulervm. These fonts do not go well with the standard Computer Modern
text fonts. Of the (free) ones which do match well, we have chosen
Charter, from Micropress. We hope you like the result. To see how
it works, download the sample Chapter 9 as
a pdf file, or look at a recent paper on
Ehresmann's work.
The following is extracted from the documentation on Euler-VM:
With Donald Knuth's assistance and encouragement, Hermann Zapf, one of the
premier font designers of the 20th century, was commissioned to create designs
for Fraktur and script, and for a somewhat experimental, upright cursive
alphabet that would represent a mathematician's handwriting on a blackboard
and that could be used in place of italic. The designs that resulted were
named Euler, in honor of Leonhard Euler, a prominent mathematician of the
eighteenth century. Zapf's designs were rendered in METAFONT code by graduate
students at Stanford, working under Knuth's direction. Euler Virtual Math
(Euler-VM) is a set of virtual fonts based primarily on the Euler fonts.
To use these fonts, include \usepackage{charter,eulervm} in the preamble.
Corrections
A number of corrections were needed to the first printing, so a second printing
was done. This was found to have a pagination error which was soon corrected.
The only error known is in Chapter 9, where `0-identification morphism' is
used in place of `universal morphism'.
Acknowledgements:
It is a pleasure to thank Gareth Evans for his work on organising and producing
the final versions of the Latex files, including the redrawing of figures
in CorelDraw. Also to Michel Zisman for improvements in the exposition on
the Jordan Curve Theorem, which were implemented in the second printing (May
19, 2006).
Thanks also to Booksurge for producing such an excellent result under their
scheme.
Thanks to a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2002-2004) which enabled the
complete retyping of the book.
Special thanks to John Robinson and Ben Dickens for the magnificent cover
design. The front cover is based on the sculpture `Journey', itself derived
from a model of the Mobius Band. For more information on the sculpture, see
www.popmath.org.uk, and also the version in
Macquarie.