Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!hp4nl!nikhefh!t68
From: t68@nikhefh.nikhef.nl (Jos Vermaseren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: 'Form' math prog details....
Message-ID: <571@nikhefh.nikhef.nl>
Date: 29 Nov 89 10:03:56 GMT
References: <89332.135731JJL101@PSUVM.BITNET>
Reply-To: t68@nikhefh.nikhef.nl (Jos Vermaseren)
Organization: Nikhef-H, Amsterdam (the Netherlands).
Lines: 34

Hi,

The files with FORM (like the readme) tell most of the
story, but for people who would like to know before they
unpack:

FORM needs a 1 Mbyte Atari with a hard disk.
It is very good with the standard symbolic expressions
(multivariate polynomials, functions) and in addition
it knows vectors and indices.
It has exptensive capabilities for pattern matching when
making substitutions.
It is set up for very large expressions and is by far the
fastest program for such big expressions that I know of.
(big means > 10^5 terms)
It has most of the features of a regular programming language
and then some.

It does NOT have a large knowledge library like maple, mathematica
reduce and macsyma. You will have to provide the algorithms for
solving difficult problems yourself. This is what you have to
do most of the time anyway when you have large problems.
Such algorithms can be stored inside procedures that can be picked up
dynamically. (They are in the regular FORM language).

There is a manual with many examples.

(this is if you can read the dvi file)

Jos Vermaseren

Disclamor:
This cannot possibly represent the opinion of my employer.
Guess why.....