<!-- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% --> <!-- %% --> <!-- %W preface.tex GAP documentation Joachim Neubueser --> <!-- %% --> <!-- %% --> <!-- %Y Copyright (C) 1997, Lehrstuhl D für Mathematik, RWTH Aachen, Germany --> <!-- %% --> <!-- %% This file contains the preface of the GAP tutorial. --> <!-- %% --> <!-- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% -->
<Chapter Label="Preface">
<Heading>Preface</Heading>
Welcome to &GAP;. This preface serves not only to introduce this
manual, <Q>the &GAP; Tutorial</Q>, but also as an introduction to the
system as a whole.
<P/>
&GAP; stands for <E>Groups, Algorithms and Programming</E>. The name was
chosen to reflect the aim of the system, which is introduced in this
tutorial manual. Since that choice, the system has become somewhat
broader, and you will also find information about algorithms and
programming for other algebraic structures, such as semigroups and
algebras.
<P/>
In addition to this manual, there are <E>&GAP; Reference Manual</E>
<Alt Only="HTML">(see <Ref BookName="ref" Label="Preface"/>)</Alt>
containing detailed documentation of the mathematical functionality of &GAP;,
and
<E>HPC-GAP Reference Manual</E> <!-- <Alt Only="HTML">(see <Ref BookName="hpc" Label="Tasks"/>)</Alt>
-->
documenting a multi-threaded version of GAP.
<P/>
There is also a document <F>CHANGES.md</F> in the root directory on the
most essential changes from previous &GAP; releases.
A lot of the functionality of the system and a number of
contributed extensions are provided as <Q>&GAP; packages</Q>
and each of these has its own manual.
<P/>
Subsequent sections of this preface explain the structure of the
system and list sources of further information about &GAP;.
<P/>
<!-- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% -->
<Section Label="The GAP System">
<Heading>The &GAP; System</Heading>
<#Include SYSTEM "../ref/overview.xml">
</Section>
<!-- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% -->
<Section Label="Further Information about GAP">
<Heading>Further Information about &GAP;</Heading>
<#Include SYSTEM "../ref/moreinfo.xml">
</Section>
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