Dear GAP forum,
enclosed is the announcement of the new system CHEVIE. This is a package
based on GAP and MAPLE, and is developed jointly by Gerhard Hiss, Frank
L"ubeck, Gunter Malle (Heidelberg), and Meinolf Geck, G"otz Pfeiffer (Aachen).

We should be very grateful for any comments, remarks, bug reports etc.

Kind regards,
G.H., F.L., G.M., M.G., G.P.

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                        Announcement of CHEVIE
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This is to announce the first public release of CHEVIE, a computer
algebra package for symbolic calculations with generic character
tables of groups of Lie type (including Green functions), Weyl groups
and Hecke algebras. It is based on the computer algebra systems GAP
(Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik, RWTH Aachen) and MAPLE (The Symbolic
Computation Group, University of Waterloo).

CHEVIE is accompanied by a library of generic character tables, tables
of Green functions, tables of unipotent characters and character
tables of Hecke algebras. Here is a brief sketch of the main features
and contents of CHEVIE.

* Generic ordinary character tables for all series of finite groups of
Lie type of small rank.

* Tables of Green polynomials (for exceptional and classical groups of
low rank, and disconnected groups), and a program for calculating the
Green polynomials for groups of type A.

* Programs for working with these tables (scalar products, tensor
products, structure constants), constructing new tables and viewing
respectively printing them in TeX format.

* Character tables of Hecke algebras for all types of rank at most 7,
and recursive algorithms for computing them for types A and B (the
formulae for type B and rank larger than 7 give the correct result
only conjecturally). Tables and programs for the Weyl groups
themselves are already available through GAP.

* Programs for computing Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, left cells and
the corresponding representations for Weyl groups (effective for rank
at most 4).

* A manual with a detailed description of the functions and
illustrating examples.

CHEVIE is a joint project of Meinolf Geck and Goetz Pfeiffer
(Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik, RWTH Aachen, Templergraben 64, D-52062
Aachen), and Gerhard Hiss, Frank Luebeck and Gunter Malle (IWR der
Universitaet Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 368, D-69120 Heidelberg).
It can be obtained via anonymous ftp through one of the ftp-servers

samson.math.rwth-aachen.de (Internet number: 137.226.152.6)
ftp.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Internet number: 129.206.104.40)

'ftp' to one of  the servers mentioned above, login  as user 'ftp' and
give your full e-mail address as password.  CHEVIE is in the directory
'pub/chevie'.         You will find     the two     files 'README' and
'chevie_tar.Z'.   In uncompressed form, CHEVIE  requires  5 MB of disc
space.
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