Plans for next release

[Waldek Hebisch]

I aim to have to following things in the next release:
- Usual cleanups and restructuring. In particular I am moving
error/informational messages inline. Large part of this is done,
I am going to commit somewhat more, but there are few tricky
cases probably will remain.
- HyperDoc in Spad. I have code that works reasonably well, but
some features of old HyperDoc ATM are not implemented and it
make more Boot calls that I like. Also I keep finding new
bugs. So it still needs work but I think it will be ready to
include in this release.
- New factorization code. Current factorization/gcd is based on
Wang algorithm. I working on code using Zippel method. I am
combing this with new Hensel lifting code. I also have experimental
code for Ben Orr-Tivari method. This has potential to be much faster
than old code, expecially for very sparse polynomials with many
variables. Actually, several ingredients work fine, but there
are few missing pieces and I need to integrate it into working
whole. The idea is to eventually replace old code, but for release
there is possibility of using old code by defualt and putting
new code in an extra package.
- Direct generation of HTML API pages. That needs some work on
quality of pages. There is need for Javascript search code.

The above are things that I currently work on. There are other
things that may get done, but I do not want to do too much
things simultaneously so the timelines is less clear. That
includes:
- Improvements to equation solver, both polynomial part (which
could benefit from Zippel method and improvements to Goebner
bases) and general solving (which could do better work of
transforming general equations to polynomial ones).
- Improvements to differential equation solver. I have piece of
old code that handles some nonlinear equations that our current
solver can not do, but it needs more work before it can be
included.
- I would like to come back to improving integrator. I feel that
integrator needs substantial restructuring and probably I will do
this only after the items I currently work on are done.

There are other longer term plans, but I do not think I will
manage to do them for next release. Let me only say that
long term plan is to replace current Boot code by Spad.
Replacing HyperDoc code is doing this for one subsystem.

Concerning time, release will happen when enough is done. Which
may happen as early as in June, but more likly later.

--
Waldek Hebisch