Dear GAP Forum,

The "kbmag" package is now available as a GAP share library by ftp from

ftp://ftp.math.rwth-aachen.de/pub/incoming/kbmag.zoo

(or as kbmag.tar.gz). Instructions for installing it as a share library
are contained in the README file. (It can also be used as a standalone.)

It is a package written in standard C with an interface to GAP provided.
It should work with any C compiler, but has only been tested on UNIX
machines.

It offers two related facilities that can be applied to a finitely presented
group G. The first is a Knuth-Bendix completion program, which aims to
construct a finite complete (confluent) rewriting system for the group.
A variety of word-orderings are available, including shortlex, weighted lex,
recursive path, and wreath product orderings.

The second attempts to compute an automatic structure for G relative to a
shortlex ordering. Of course, these will only be successful for a few
particular types of groups G (including all finite groups).

If either of these procedures is successful on G, then the word problem is
solvable efficiently, and words in the group generators can be reduced to
a unique normal form for the group element that they define. The set of
words in normal form can also be enumerated (up to a specified length) or
counted.

Derek Holt.