Dear GAP-Forum,

With several announcements of beta versions you are certainly aware that
there is a newer version, GAP4; the first official release of which, version
4.1, we intend to release early this summer.
In this version some concepts will change. These changes are mainly due to
shortcomings or restrictions in the original design we tried to correct.
(On the user level most of these changes are minor. If you know GAP3 you
should be able to use GAP4 without problems.)
Some of you have already obtained versions of GAP4 and know about these
changes. Anyhow if you are programming in GAP and are writing code that you
are likely to use for some time, it would be sensible not to use
tricks which will not work in GAP4.
To help with this we have put an intermediate version of the GAP4 manual on
the web. This is a copy of the version we are currently working on, so don't
bet on every detail in it, but it should give a good impression of the
things to come. I especially recommend the chapter ``Migrating to GAP4'' in
the ``Tutorial'' part which explains about the major changes between the
versions.
You will find the manual at
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~gap/Info4/manual.html
(It is not yet mirrored as it is preliminary and we will probably change it
regularly.)

Best wishes,

Alexander Hulpke