- added man page for ginac-config

[ginac.git] / NEWS

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 This file records noteworthy changes.
 
+0.6.5 ()
+* Non-integer powers of a symbol are treated as constants by (l)degree() and
+  coeff(). Using these functions on an expression containing such powers used
+  to fail with an internal error message. The side-effect is that collect()
+  can be used on expressions which are not polynomials.
+* Added a man page for the ginac-config script.
+
+0.6.4 (10 August 2000)
+* Complete revamp of methods in class matrix.  Some redundant (and poor)
+  implementations of elimination schemes were thrown out.  The code is now
+  highly orthogonal, more flexible and much more efficient.
+* Some long standing and quite nasty bugs were discovered and fixed in the
+  following functions: add::normal(), heur_gcd(), sr_gcd() and Order_eval().
+
+0.6.3 (25 July 2000)
+* Derivatives are now assembled in a slightly different manner (i.e. they
+  might 'look' different on first sight).  Under certain circumstances this
+  can result in a dramatic speedup because it gives hashing a better chance,
+  especially when computing higher derivatives.
+* Some series expansions of built-in functions have been reengineered.
+* The algorithm for computing determinants can be chosen by the user.  See
+  ginac/flags.h and ginac/matrix.h.
+* The Dilogarithm (Li2) now has floating point evaluation, derivative and a
+  proper series expansion.
+* Namespace 'std' cleanly disentangled, as demanded by ISO/EIC 14882-1998(E).
+* Some minor bugfixes, one major lsolve()-bugfix and documentation updates.
+
+0.6.2 (21 June 2000)
+* ginaccint.bin is now launched by a binary program instead of by a scripts.
+  This allows us to write #!-scripts.  A small test suite for GiNaC-cint was
+  added.
+* Several minor bugfixes.
+
+0.6.1 (18 May 2000)
+* Cleanup in the interface to Cint.  The required version is now Cint 5.14.38.
+* Several bugfixes in target install.
+
+0.6.0 (11 May 2000)
+* IMPORTANT: Several interface changes make programs written with GiNaC 
+  much clearer but break compatibility with older versions:
+  - f(x).series(x,p[,o]) -> f(x).series(x==p,o)
+  - series(f(x),x,p[,o]) -> series(f(x),x==p,o)
+  - gamma() -> tgamma()  (The true Gamma function, there is now also
+    log(tgamma()), called lgamma(), in accord with ISO/IEC 9899:1999.)
+  - EulerGamma -> Euler
+* #include'ing ginac.h defines the preprocessor symbols GINACLIB_MAJOR_VERSION,
+  GINACLIB_MINOR_VERSION, and GINACLIB_MICRO_VERSION with the respective GiNaC
+  library version numbers.
+* Expressions can be constructed from strings like this:
+    ex e("2*x+y", lst(x, y));
+* ex::to_rational() provides a way to extend the domain of functions like
+  gcd() and divide() that only work on polynomials or rational functions (the
+  good old ex::subs() method reverses this process)
+* Calling diff() on a function that has no derivative defined returns the
+  inert derivative function "Derivative".
+* Several new timings in the check target.  Some of them may be rather rude 
+  at your machine, feel free to interrupt them.
+
 0.5.4 (15 March 2000)
 * Some algorithms in class matrix (notably determinant) were replaced by
   less brain-dead ones and should now have much better performance.