Dear Colleagues,

Joe Kincaid asked in the Forum:

Is the GAP manual available in printed form anywhere? I know I can
print the LaTeX file, but our library would rather buy it from a
publisher than bound a loose set of pages.

The question has been raised before and is absolutely reasonable.

However:

The manual (fortunately!) has changed rather frequently and will
continue to change, due to new functionality made available in GAP, it
will in particular change when the new GAP 4 will be released.

The more as the total number of copies needed at a given moment is not
that big, a commercial publisher would soon be faced with the problem
what to do with copies that do not represent the state of the art any
more.

We have considered the possibility to get ourselves a small number of
copies printed and bound and to sell them, but all the administrative
overhead and financial problems of prepaying the printing, sending
copies, invoices, reminders etc is just beyond us. Lehrstuhl D is just
a small math department with one secretary. Developing and maintaining
GAP and trying to answer every question brought forward to us, is
going almost beyond the limits of what we can do.

So: sorry, we can't help with that one, and your library most put up
with binding a lose set of pages (or perhaps rather put them into a
folder to which you could add additions).

Let me add that if somebody among the readers of this Forum is willing
to provide bound copies, in contact with us and taking into due
account the ongoing changes of the manual, he is most welcome to
contact us.

Kind regards Joachim Neubueser