Dear Colleagues,

Chris Charnes question

How do we get version 3.4?
Does it entail getting the whole system again?

reflects some confusion that partially may have been caused by
Alexander Hulpke's reply to the 'Weird message'. Let me just put facts
straight:

GAP 3.4 has not yet been released but indeed the release is close
ahead. Even if nobody is prepared to bet for that, I hope for next
week.

Yes, getting 3.4 will entail getting the whole system again. The
change from 3.3 to 3.4 will mean a growth of the code (and the manual
- sorry!) by about 25%, so this cannot be done by patches.

We will post an announcement with details in the gap-forum as soon as
3.4 can be ftp'd again from servers, please wait for that, but also
look at the GAP-forum.

As his last remark Alexander suggested sending error reports like the
'weird message' to gap-trouble rather than to gap-forum. I do not
quite agree. It is true that the bug which was reported in the 'weird
message' had been reported before, but it may have not even been
obvious to many GAP users that this was indeed the same bug. Of
course the bugs that by all means should be reported in the forum are
those that produce a wrong result that cannot be recognised as being
wrong at first sight. Bugs like the one reported in the 'weird
message' producing a rather difficult error message, are annoying but
not quite as dangerous. They may go to gap-trouble and after finding
out what is the matter, we will report to the forum, if they are of
the 'dangerous' species, but in my view there is nothing at all wrong
in sending them to the forum directly.

Problems that arise with the installation or use of GAP on a specific
computer or with a specific operating system are clear candidates for
gap-trouble but all that can happen to any gap user on any computer
can and should in principle be communicated to the gap-forum. I hope
that having to throw away some letters is not too high a price for
being kept fully informed of whatever happens, good or bad, in the
system that you are using.

Experience with previous releases shows that after the forthcoming
release we will have to expect some flood of both technical questions
in gap-trouble and discussions in gap-forum. Therefore I thought that
I should state (repeat) the above now. Also I want to ask your
understanding if right after the release we may get a bit slow in
answering.

Nevertheless have fun with GAP 3.4 (when it is out).

Joachim Neubueser