petti@ALLEGHENY.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM (Richard Petti) (04/15/88)
Robert,
Thank you for your interest in MACSYMA. Here is some information on our new
release of MACSYMA for VAX VMS systems. We would be happy to answer any
questions you have.
In addition to these product features, our software is supported by a staff
of 14 people, including seven technical staff. Service, training,
installation guides and release notes are available.
Dick Petti
Director, Computer Aided Mathematics Group
Symbolics, Inc.
Eleven Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
tel: (617) 621-7770
(800) MACSYMA
email: petti@scrc-stony-brook.arpa
petti@symbolics.com
March 1988
HIGHLIGHTS OF COMMON LISP MACSYMA 412.61 FOR VAX/VMS USERS
Since January 1985, we have poured most of our development effort into a new
generation of MACSYMA(R) software based on Common Lisp. Versions of this
software are now available on Symbolics(TM) and Apollo(R) workstations, and we
plan to deliver it on VAX(TM)/VMS(TM) systems in April or May of this year.
Versions of this product for SUN(TM) workstations and VAX UNIX(TM) systems will
be available at a later date.
The following enhancements are planned for VAX/VMS MACSYMA release 412.61.
Some of these are old packages which have not been delivered in recent VAX/VMS
releases, some are improvements to existing packages, and some are entirely
new. While we expect all of these enhancements to be included in the product,
we will not hold up the release if some of them are not ready on schedule.
o Symbolic Algebra:
- GROBNER: The Grobner algorithm enables MACSYMA to find more solutions
to systems of polynomial equations.
- JORDAN_FORM, a command for computing the Jordan form of matrices, has
been added.
o Symbolic Calculus:
- Ordinary Differential Equations (O.D.E.'s):
. ODEFI finds first integrals of first order O.D.E.'s, using the powerful
Prelle-Singer algorithm.
. ODE, the main solution package for O.D.E.'s, has been made more
reliable.
- INTEQN: The integral equation package has been repaired and extended.
- Tensor analysis:
. CTENSOR, the component tensor package, has been extended to include
frame fields, affine torsion and conformal nonmetricity.
. ITENSR, the indicial tensor analysis package, has been repaired and
is fully functional for VAX users for the first time.
. CARTAN, a package for performing exterior calculus, is repaired.
- OPTVAR, a package for solving variational problems, is available.
o Symbolic Approximation Methods:
- Taylor methods:
. TAYLOR_SOLVE: Solves algebraic and transcendental equations in Taylor
series. Very useful for equations which do not have closed-form
solutions, or whose exact solutions are very complicated.
. TAYLOR_ODE: finds Taylor series solutions of systems of simultaneous
ordinary differential equations which satisfy Lipshitz conditions.
Useful for studying local behavior of complicated systems of O.D.E.'s.
- Perturbation theory methods for O.D.E.'s:
. LINDSTEDT: Finds periodic series solutions for perturbed oscillator
equations using Lindstedt's method.
. AVERAGE_PERIODIC_ODE: Implements the method of averaging for periodic
O.D.E.'s. This is the most popular method for finding qualitative
information about the family of solutions of an ordinary differential
equation.
o Numerical analysis:
- Runge-Kutta numerical integration of systems of O.D.E.'s.
- Newton-Cotes numerical integration.
- Interpolation of numerical roots of equations.
- FFT: Fast Fourier transforms.
- LSQ: Least squares polynomial fit to scattered data.
o Fortran Links:
- GENTRAN, a very powerful Fortran generator, has been installed. It can
translate mathematical expressions, iteration statements, if-then
statements, data type declaration information and much more into Fortran,
`C' or Ratfor. In its `template mode', Gentran enables users to write
"mixed Fortran-MACSYMA code".
o Graphics: VAX/VMS users will have access to full MACSYMA plotting
capabilities in two and three dimensions.
o Pattern Matching: MACSYMA's capabilities were extended in 1986, and these
improvements will be included in the new VAX/VMS version of MACSYMA.
o Compilation: Thanks to the VAX LISP runtime version we are shipping under
MACSYMA, users can for the first time compile their own MACSYMA code. This
results in a 2-10 times speed improvement in execution of large MACSYMA
programs.
o Documentation:
- User's Guide: In July 1987 we made available the MACSYMA User's Guide,
which is much more accessible than the MACSYMA Reference Manual.
- Reference Manual: In the summer of 1988 we will deliver version 13 of the
MACSYMA Reference Manual, which will be reorganized, and much easier to
use.
o Reliability: Our top priority has been to improve the reliability of
Macsyma over the past two years. Many minor improvements have been made.
--
MACSYMA(R) is a registered trademark of Symbolics, Inc.
Symbolics is a trademark of Symbolics, Inc.
Apollo(R) is a registered trademark of Apollo Computer Inc.
VAX and VMS are trademarks of the Digital Equipment Corporation.
SUN is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.
(C) Copyright 1988 Symbolics, Inc.
All rights reserved.