
              RCWA -- [R]esidue-[C]lass-[W]ise [A]ffine groups
              ================================================

                           -- A GAP 4 Package --

                               Version 4.3.1

        Author and Maintainer:  Stefan Kohl, stefan@mcs.st-and.ac.uk


                                  Abstract

This package for GAP 4 provides implementations of algorithms and methods for
computing in certain  infinite permutation groups  acting on the set of inte-
gers.  It can be used to investigate  the following types  of groups and many
more:

 - Finite groups.
 - Free groups of finite rank.
 - Free products of finitely many finite groups.
 - Direct products of such groups.
 - Wreath products of such groups with finite groups and with (Z,+).
 - Subgroups of any such groups.

Among these groups there are finitely generated groups which are not finitely
presented, and such with  unsolvable membership problem.  Further, any finite
group embeds into some divisible torsion group which RCWA can deal with.
    With the help of  this package,  the author has found  a countable simple
group which is generated by involutions interchanging disjoint  residue clas-
ses of the integers and which all the above groups embed into.
    For details on how to use the RCWA package, see the package documentation
in the `doc' subdirectory --  either view its  HTML version (chap0.html) with
a browser, or its PDF version (manual.pdf) with a PDF viewer.


                                Requirements

This  version  of RCWA needs  GAP >=4.8.2,  ResClasses >=4.4.0,  GRAPE >=4.7,
Polycyclic >=2.11, FR >=2.2.1, GAPDoc >=1.5.1 and Utils >=0.38.  All required
packages are already present in a standard GAP installation. RCWA can be used
on all platforms for which GAP is available.  It is completely written in the
GAP language and does neither contain nor require  external binaries.


                                Installation

Like any other GAP package,  RCWA is usually installed in the pkg/  subdirec-
tory of the GAP distribution.  This is accomplished by extracting the package
archive file in this directory.  After this you can load the package as usual
via LoadPackage( "rcwa" );.
    For further advice  on questions of technical nature please see the chap-
ter `Installation and Auxiliary Functions' in the manual.


                          Distribution and Updates

New releases of this package are put online on the package web page

       http://www.gap-system.org/DevelopersPages/StefanKohl/rcwa.html

                                     ---

If you install RCWA or if you use it in some of your work, then please let me
know. -- I am interested very much in any applications of this package.  Also
please let me know  if you have problems with this package,  or if you find a
bug.

