while preparing examples for a lecture, I got confused when I noticed:
with the Applicative (like) operators <*>, <*, *>,
angle brackets indicate where structure comes from,
but with the union-combining operators |<, |>| etc., angle brackets
indicate where value comes from, and bars indicate structure.
I see that the design problem is that you want two "pointy" signs at the same time.
Perhaps it's not that much of a problem because applicative-like operators don't appear often in real life.