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1.4 Release Notes

With the standard input grammar, the precedence of ‘-’ as a prefix behaves strangely. a^-b*c becomes a^(-b*c) while a^b*c ⇒ (a^b)*c.

Using divide to divide a polynomial by an integer does not work.

The command example executes the example it gives. This can lead to unpredictable results if the variables and constants in the example have already been given values by the user.

The function minor should be modified to accept lists for row and col.

Resultant might be modified to compute the resultant of a system of polynomials with respect to a list of variables.

Conventions

Things that are labeled as Operators can occur in expressions output by Jacal. Things that are labeled as Commands act upon their arguments and do not generally occur in expressions output by Jacal. Things that are labeled as flags are set to control aspects of the Jacal environment.

The examples throughout this text were produced using SCM.

Jacal has several grammars it understands. The standard grammar is used in this manual. It is like simple TeX grammar and algol family computer languages.

Identifier names are case sensitive and can be any number of characters long.

Manifest

COPYING

details the LACK OF WARRANTY for Jacal and the conditions for distributing Jacal.

HELP

is online introduction to using Jacal.

ChangeLog

documents changes to Jacal.

jacal

is a unix (sh) script to start an interactive jacal session.

demo

demonstrates batch file use. "batch(demo);" to use in jacal.

rw.math

is a batch file of Robertson-Walker model of General Relativity.

test.math

is a batch file which tests Jacal.

jacal.texi

is documentation on how to use jacal in TeXinfo format.

DOC

has files telling about how jacal works.

algdenom

gives an algorithm for clearing radicals and other algebraic field extensions from denominators.

grammar

explains how to create new grammars.

history

gives a little history of jacal.

lambda

explains mid-level data formats. From a Dr. Dobbs article.

ratint.tex

article explaining jacal’s integration algorithm.

math.scm

is the file you load into scheme in order to run jacal.

toploads.scm

contains comments describing the rest of the files.

modeinit.scm

has initializations for modes in Jacal.

view.scm

is a program for viewing TeX expressions.