MAGNUS
A graphically-oriented software system for
computational group theory
The MAGNUS Computational Group Theory Package is an innovative symbolic algebra package providing facilities for doing calculations in and about infinite groups. Almost all symbolic algebra systems are oriented toward finite computations that are guaranteed to produce answers, given enough time and resources. By contrast, MAGNUS is concerned with experiments and computations on infinite groups which in some cases are known to terminate, while in others are known to be generally recursively unsolvable.
Features
- A graphical object and method based user interface which is easy and intuitive to use and naturally reflects the underlying C++ classes;
- A kernel comprised of a ``session manager", to communicate between the user interface or front-end and the back-end where computations are carried out, and ``computation managers" which direct the computations which may involve several algorithms and ``information centers" where information is stored;
- Facilities for performing several procedures in parallel and allocating resources to each of several simultaneous algorithms working on the same problem;
- Enumerators which generate sizable finite approximations to both finite and infinite algebraic objects and make it possible to carry out searches for answers even when general algorithms may not exist;
- Innovative genetic algorithms;
- A package manager to ``plug in" more special purpose algorithms written by others;
Use and Distribution
Copyright (C) 1994-2005 The New York Group Theory Cooperative
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (see doc/COPYING file) as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Documentation and Other Resources
There is some documentation in the `doc' subdirectory of the distribution. As usual, this could be vastly improved.
MAGNUS is available from
There are two contact e-mail addresses:
- for general comments and suggestions about Magnus send e-mail to:
- bug reports, with a brief description of the group being tested and the tool that was buggy, should be sent to:
Supported Platforms
MAGNUS can be successfully compiled on Fedora Core 1, 2, and 3 platforms (gcc versions used are respectively 3.3.2, 3.3.3, and 3.4.2/4.0.1). A previous version working with gcc 2.95.3 is also available.
MAGNUS has as well been tested on the following platforms:
FreeBSD 4.11 (gmake and gcc 3.3.2)
Red Hat / SuSE Linux 2.2 (2.4) (Tcl/Tk 8.x)
- Should run on other comparable Linuxes as well
We have old binary releases for Solaris 2.5 and SunOs4.1.3
available at http://www.grouptheory.org
Note that though MAGNUS can be built on Fedora Core 3, it cannot run normally when blackbox programs are used. The reason behind this is still unclear.
Installation
Installation is described in the file INSTALL in the this directory.
History
There is a ChangeLog file which describes changes for each MAGNUS' release available in the same directory.