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<!--  intro.xml        groupoids documentation            Chris Wensley  -->
<!--                                                       & Emma Moore  -->
<!--  Copyright (C) 2000-2018, Emma Moore and Chris Wensley,             --> 
<!--  School of Computer Science, Bangor University, U.K.                --> 
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<Chapter Label="chap-intro">
<Heading>Introduction</Heading>

Groupoids are mathematical categories in which every arrow is invertible. 
The &groupoids; package provides functions for the computation with
groupoids and their morphisms; 
for graphs of groups and graphs of groupoids. 
The package is far from complete, and development continues. 
<P/>
It was used by Emma Moore in her thesis <Cite Key="emma-thesis" /> 
to calculate normal forms for <E>free products with amalgamation</E>, 
and for <E>HNN-extensions</E> 
when the initial groups have rewriting systems.
<P/>

The package may be obtained as a compressed tar file 
<File>groupoids-version.number.tar.gz</File>
by ftp from one of the following sites: 
<List>
<Item>
the &groupoids; GitHub site: 
<URL>https://github.com/gap-packages.github.io/groupoids/</URL>. 
</Item>
<Item>
any &GAP; archive, e.g. 
<URL>https://www.gap-system.org/Packages/packages.html</URL>; 
</Item>
</List>
The package also has a GitHub repository at: 
<URL>https://github.com/gap-packages/groupoids/</URL>.
<P/>

The information parameter <C>InfoGroupoids</C> takes default value <C>1</C> 
which, for the benefit of new users, causes more messages 
to be printed out when operations fail.
When raised to a higher value, additional information is printed out. 
<P/>
Help is available in the usual way.
<P/>
<Example>
<![CDATA[
gap> LoadPackage( "groupoids" );
]]>
</Example>

For version 1.05 the package was completely restructured, 
starting with <E>magmas with objects</E> and their mappings, 
and building up to groupoids via semigroups with objects 
and monoids with objects. 
From version 1.07 the package includes some functions to implement 
constructions contained in <Cite Key="AlWe" />. 
More functions will be released as soon as possible.  
<P/>
Once the package is loaded, it is possible to check the correct 
installation by running the test suite of the package with the command  
<C> ReadPackage("groupoids","tst/testing.g"); </C>. 
Additional tests may be run using 
<C> ReadPackage("groupoids","tst/testextra.g");.</C> 
(The file <C>"tst/testall.g"</C> is used for automated testing.)  
<P/>
You may reference this package by mentioning <Cite Key="BrMoPoWe" />, 
<Cite Key="emma-thesis" /> and <Cite Key="AlWe" />. 

<P/>
Additional information can be found on the 
<E>Computational Higher Dimensional Algebra</E> website at: 
<URL>http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~mas023/chda/intro.html</URL>. 

</Chapter>
