Subject: Sun-Symbolic-Math Digest v1n2 Sun-Symbolic-Math Digest Wednesday, February 17, 1988 Volume 1 : Number 1 Editor: Steve Christensen Today's Topics: Administrative Stuff New SUN, New Maple, New Manual Info on SMP Explorer package? Symbolic Manipulation SIG muTENSOR and REDTEN macsyma on supercomputers? Macsyma vs Maple ------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Administrative Stuff Welcome to the first Sun-Symbolic-Math Digest. The response has been very good with nearly 70 people on the list in just 10 days. An ftp server has been set up for the collection of software to be distributed to anyone on this mailing list. To access this server, type ftp ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu and login as anonymous with anything as a password. This will take you to a directory with a subdirectory called Symbolic. cd to that directory which looks like: -rwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 17 14:07 Cayley drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 17 14:07 Digest_Archive drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:55 Index drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:36 Macsyma drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:36 Maple drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:36 Mathematica drwxrwxrwx 2 steve 512 Feb 12 01:02 New drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:55 Other -rwxr-xr-x 1 steve 1457 Feb 12 23:54 README_How_To_Submit drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:36 Reduce drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:36 SMP drwxr-xr-x 2 steve 24 Feb 12 00:37 Sheep The subdirectories will include files pertaining to the system named. The Digest_Archive will contain these Digests and the Index will contain a list of what is in each directory. To submit, put files in the New directory. Read the README_How_To_Submit to help avoid problems. This files says: ********* Sun-Symbolic-Math Archives. When submitting a program, libraries or other files ship them in the following form: README (including information on author and how to contact them and ownership of programs) Documentation Files (ascii, TeX or troff formal) Source Sun executables (or all information needed, Makefiles,etc. to create executables) I would prefer that the above files be put in .tar.Z compressed form to save on diskspace and ftp times. I will extract the README file. I will also accept shorter files in the .shar form emailed to Sun-Symbolic-Math. Such files will then be compressed. Submit to the directory New, not one of the other directories. I will distribute the programs to the appropriate directory and add the entry and README files to an index directory. Files are available for anonymous ftp from the subdirectories of this directory. Please note the other files in the directory New before you send something so that you do not duplicate a file name already there. While I will attempt to check that each program does what it claims, questions and things like upgrades, bug fixes, etc. are up to the author. Comments on any aspect of the programs are welcome and should be sent to Sun-Symbolic-Math@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu. If you do submit something, email me at the above address with a short paragraph on what you have submitted and I will notify the mailing list. ****** I welcome comments or suggestions on how this mailing list and archive should be run or improved. I will cooperative with the sci.math.symbolic notesfiles and expect to do some cross-posting of digests. Non-Sun questions should typically be sent to that notesfile. --------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Christensen Research Scientist National Center for Supercomputing Application University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 258 Computing Applications Building 605 E. Springfield Avenue Champaign, IL 61820 USA (217)244-0544 steve@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu steve%spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu@uiucvmd.bitnet Sun-Symbolic-Math-Request@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu (add or take off mailing list) Sun-Symbolic-Math@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Articles, questions, talk, rumors) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Feb 88 22:10:02 EST From: "Gaston H. Gonnet" Subject: New SUN, New Maple, New Manual. A happy coincidence, we have just finished porting the first version of Maple 4.2 to the SUN-4. This new version will also coincide with a new edition of the "Maple User's Guide" (5th edition), so users will not have to wade through the old manual and three sets of updates. Also, very shortly (next week), we will start distribution of version 4.2 on the SUN-3. Starting with version 4.2 we will offer a yearly subscription service consisting of: (a) new versions of Maple (b) new versions of manuals / tutorials (c) three-day turnaround on technical questions (e-mail, telephone or regular mail) (d) the Maple newsletter For more detailed information, please e-mail to: watmum!scg@waterloo or {....}!watmath!watmum!scg or to the address in this message regular mail to: Symbolic Computation Group University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 (519) 885-1211 X3055 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Feb 88 13:39:57 PST From: trwrb!jumper@trwind.ind.TRW.COM (Gregory S. Jumper) Subject: Info on SMP [This is an edited version of a note to me on SMP --- smc] I have met the man at Inference Corporation (they are only a few miles from TRW) who is in charge of SMP, a very nice fellow by the name of David Keogh. After I got your message, I called him to get an update on the status of SMP. He told me that Inference is looking to license SMP to a third party; they had four interested companies, which have now been narrowed to two. David believes the arrangements should be completed in about a month, but he admits that he has been saying that for some time. He says one of the concerns Inference has is that the new vendor must be able to provide good support for SMP; Inference has no intention of letting SMP "wither away," as it appeared it would do in the past. SMP is currently at release 1.6.0 (we have an unsupported port, dubbed "1.5.2", of version 1.5.0 to the Pyramid). According to the release notes I have, substantial changes appear to have been made for both 1.5.0 and 1.6.0. By the way, here is David's address (if you don't already have it): David Keogh Inference Corporation 5300 West Century Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045 (213)417-7997 Greg Jumper ARPA Internet: trwrb!jumper@trwind.TRW.COM UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!trwrb!jumper P.S. This is my last week at TRW, so I will be electronically "incommunicado" after this Friday (12 Feb) until I get network access at my new job in Dallas. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Feb 88 14:49:46 CST From: mklein@aisung.cs.uiuc.edu (Mark Klein) Subject: Explorer package? [Here is a local question sent to me. While it does not refer to SUN's, I would like to know about SUN packages that can do this sort of problem. --- smc] I am interested in using a symbolic math package for my thesis work, for propagating constraints represented as algebraic equations. Since I do my work on an TI Explorer lisp machine I would like to find the Common Lisp source code for such a package and install it there. I have gotten the CL source for "Maxima" but it does not install properly on my Explorer. I would like to join the symbolic math mail group, and am particularly interested in any information you or others may have on getting a math package installed on an Explorer. Thanks, Mark Klein mklein@aisung.CS.UIUC.EDU Department of Medical Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1408 W. University Urbana, Illinois 61801 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Feb 88 14:44:57 PST From: weiser.pa@Xerox.COM Subject: Symbolic Manipulation SIG Sandy- Here is a report on the Symbolic Computing SIG. Please feel free to use this information for your SunTechnology article, and also place in the next available README. Thanks. -mark [This is the short report I wrote for the SUN User Group. If any of you note any corrections needed, please let me know. --smc] -------------------------------------- A special interest group on Symbolic Manipulation Systems was held at the Sun User Group Meeting in San Jose (December 1987). The SIG was chaired by Steve Christensen, a research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Representative from a number of vendors or organizations gave short 5-10 minute talks on the current status of their systems. They were: William Giarla (Northwest Computer Algorithms) discussed the recent upgrade of the REDUCE system and that the distribution system for many of the versions of REDUCE. The latest version of REDUCE is 3.3 and includes such new utilties as GENTRAN, a program writing facility. Neil Soiffer (Tektronix) talked about a "front end" that he and others have developed to make a more friendly interface to the MAPLE and REDUCE systems. MathScribe provides a window-based way of entering and viewing equations and graphics output designed to make the math systems look more like normal mathematical notation. Greg Fee of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada gave a summary of the recent developments in the Maple symbolic manipulation system. Leo Harten of Paradigm discussed the recent upgrades of the DOE version of Macsyma, usually called Vaxima. In particular, the "share" files have been debugged in a release just being made available through the National Energy Software Center at Argonne National Laboratory. Symbolics sent a representative and demonstrated their 309.6 version of Macsyma at the vendor exhibits. Their SUN version of Macsyma is currently be written in Common Lisp and significant bug fixes and upgrades to share files and the Macsyma kernel are being made. There was a discussion session where issues of file transfer and a common notation that would allow one system to send its output to the input of another system were presented. Output filters to give a TeX or similar output were advocated as was the upgrade of all of the systems to the SUN-4 platform. It was clear that a machine as fast as the SUN-4 with a powerful input, output and display "front-end" to the math engine of a program could provide a significant new tool to anyone who needs to do "symbol crunching" rather than just "number crunching". With wider use of symbolic manipulation programs on workstations, all of the programs mentioned here will be improved and many new ones will come into being. A very exciting prospect. To carry on the discussions begun in the SUG meeting, a mailing list Sun-Symbolic-Math has been created. Persons interested in joining this mailing list should send a request to: Sun-Symbolic-Math-Request@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu or steve@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu Articles or other mail should be mailed to Sun-Symbolic-Math@spock.ncsa.uiuc.edu An anonymous ftp server is being set up where libraries and other symbolic manipulation programs for SUN workstations can be keep for wide distribution. Details of this will be announced to the members of the mailing list. The organizer and moderator of this SUG SIG is Steve Christensen, who is a Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Feb 88 15:32:10 EST From: John Harper Subject: muTENSOR and REDTEN We are primarily interested in gravitational lensing and optics in inhomogeneous cosmologies etc. Most of this work does not require symbolic algebra as it is numerical in nature. However, we have developed packages in both muMATH and REDUCE for doing symbolic calculations in General Relativity. The first (called muTENSOR) will run on IBM-PC type machines and can (for example) determine that the Kerr metric is a vacuum solution in about 20 minutes. The other (called REDTEN) can do more, faster (Kerr in 10 sec. on a SUN 3/280), and is generally more powerful since it inherits the power of REDUCE. Both these systems do component manipulations rather than indicial algebra, so they are not too useful (yet) for very general calculations, those for which the explicit form of the metric is not known. [From a later message: Both muTENSOR and REDTEN will be available soon, I am just cleaning up some manuals etc. They are *not* public domain.] John Harper ------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Feb 1988 21:20-CST From: dhf@control.uchicago.edu (Daniel Friedan) Subject: macsyma on supercomputers? I hope you don't mind a question. I've been wondering if macsyma is available on any of the supercomputers. I don't have a pressing need right now but would like to have it available, if possible, for when the need might arise. Thanks for any information you can give. Daniel Friedan --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Feb 88 16:36:39 PST From: lind%entropy.ms@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Doug Lind) Subject: Macsyma vs Maple I am running a Sun-3/140, and would like to get a symbolic manipulation package like Macsyma or Maple. I would like advice on the advantages of one over the other. I have used Macsyma on a Vax, but have not used Maple. Does Macsyma do many more things, or do things much better, to justify its added expense (four times that of Maple)? I am interested in a "mathematically oriented" package, and I have found Macsyma to behave in some counter-intuitave ways. If there is anyone out there who has used both, and has a preference for one, I would very much like to hear from you. Doug Lind Dept. of Mathematics University of Washington lind@perron.ms.washington.edu =========================================================================== End of v1n1. ==============