loops/doc/chap1.txt
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1 Introduction
LOOPS is a package for GAP4 whose purpose is to:
 provide researchers in nonassociative algebra with a powerful
computational tool concerning finite loops and quasigroups,
 extend GAP toward the realm of nonassociative structures.
LOOPS has been accepted as an official package of GAP in May 2015.
1.1 License
LOOPS is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 as published by the Free
Software Foundation.
1.2 Installation
Have GAP 4.7 or newer installed on your computer.
If you do not see the subfolder pkg/loops in the main directory of GAP then
download the LOOPS package from the distribution website
http://www.math.du.edu/loops and unpack the downloaded file into the pkg
subfolder.
The package LOOPS can then be loaded to GAP anytime by calling
LoadPackage("loops");.
If you wish to load LOOPS automatically while starting GAP, start GAP,
execute the following commands,
gap> pref := UserPreference( "PackagesToLoad " );;
gap> Add( pref, "loops" );;
gap> SetUserPreference( "PackagesToLoad", pref );;
gap> WriteGapIniFile();;
quit GAP and restart it.
1.3 Documentation
The documentation has been prepared with the GAPDoc package and is therefore
available in several formats: LaTeX, pdf, ps, html, and as an inline help in
GAP. All these formats have been obtained directly from the master XML
documentation file. Consequently, the different formats of the documentation
differ only in their appearance, not in content.
The preferred format of the documentation is html with MathJax turned on.
All formats of the documentation can be found in the doc folder of LOOPS.
You can also download the documentation from the LOOPS distribution website.
The inline GAP help is available upon installing LOOPS and can be accessed
in the usual way, i.e., upon typing ?command, GAP displays the section of
the LOOPS manual containing information about command.
1.4 Test Files
Test files conforming to GAP standards are provided for LOOPS and can be
found in the folder tst. The command ReadPackage("loops","tst/testall.g")
runs all tests for LOOPS.
1.5 Memory Management
Some libraries of loops are loaded only upon explicit demand and can occupy
a lot of memory. For instance, the library or RCC loops occupies close to
100 MB of memory when fully loaded. The command LOOPS_FreeMemory(); will
attempt to free memory by unbinding on-demand library data loaded by LOOPS.
1.6 Feedback
We welcome all comments and suggestions on LOOPS, especially those
concerning the future development of the package. You can contact us by
e-mail.
1.7 Acknowledgment
We thank the following people for sending us remarks and comments, and for
suggesting new functionality of the package: Muniru Asiru, Bjoern Assmann,
Andreas Distler, Aleš Drápal, Steve Flammia, Kenneth W. Johnson, Michael K.
Kinyon, Alexander Konovalov, Frank Lübeck and Jonathan D.H. Smith.
The library of Moufang loops of order 243 was generated from data provided
by Michael C. Slattery and Ashley L. Zenisek. The library of right conjugacy
closed loops of order less than 28 was generated from data provided by
Katharina Artic. The library of commutative automorphic loops of order 27,
81 and 243 was obtained jointly with Izabella Stuhl.
Gábor P. Nagy was supported by OTKA grants F042959 and T043758, and Petr
Vojtěchovský was supported by the 2006 and 2016 University of Denver PROF
grants and the Simons Foundation Collaboration Grant 210176.