Filename:  share/contrib/README


 Code in this directory is considered external to the
 main Maxima distribution, and is not supported by
 the main Maxima team.  If you need help with one of
 the packages here, your best bet is to contact the
 author.  If the status of a package present here 
 changes to supported, it will be moved into the 
 regular share directory.  


Notes on specific packages:

Grobner/        Marek Rychlik's implementation of Grobner basis support
                from http://alamos.math.arizona.edu/~rychlik/

Zeilberger/     This is Fabrizio Caruso's implementation of 
                Zeilberger's algorithm for definite hypergeometric 
		summation and Gosper's algorithm for indefinite 
		hypergeometric summation.

descriptive/    Mario Rodriguez Riotorto's descriptive statistics
		package from http://www.telefonica.net/web2/biomates/

distrib/        Mario Rodriguez Riotorto's probability distributions
		package from http://www.telefonica.net/web2/biomates/

diffequations/  This directory contains additional methods for
		solving ordinary differential equations. Written
		by David Billinghurst.

format/         This directory contains most of Bruce Miller's
                Format package.
		http://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/computer-algebra/

gentran/        This is the gentran package from 
                http://www.symbolicnet.org/ftpsoftware/gentran.tgz

lurkmathml/	This is David Drysdale's mathml package for Maxima,
                based off of mactex.lisp.

maximaMathML/   The MathML package created and used by the 
		Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation
		group at http://icm.mcs.kent.edu. 

mcclim/		A collection of relevant McCLIM code from Andy Hefner
                and Raymond Toy. (so far).

nset/           This is nset by Barton Willis and Stavros
                Macrakis.  This package has been incorporated
                into Maxima proper now.

numericalio/	Robert Dodier's package for reading and writing 
                numerical data.

operatingsystem/ Some functions for tasks like accessing the
                Environment, handling of directories and files, etc.
                (perhaps a better name might be 'filesystem'?)
                Added to Maxima by Wolfgang Dautermann (mostly code 
                from http://clocc.sourceforge.net/)

pdiff/          This is Barton Willis's pdiff package from
                http://www.unk.edu/acad/math/people/willisb/

rand/           Code from books and papers by Richard H. Rand
		(http://tam.cornell.edu/Rand.html)

sarag/		Fabrizio Caruso's implementation of Some Algorithms
                in Real Algebraic Geometry

simplex/        Andrej Vodopivec's code for the two-phase standard simplex
                method.

solve_rec/      Andrej Vodopivec's code for solving recurrence equations
                with polynomial coefficients. It uses Petkovsek's hyper
                algorithm and Abramov's algorithm.

state/          This is Dan Stanger's state variable code.

stringproc/     A Maxima string package by Volker van Nek.
                
unit/		A new unit package by Cliff Yapp, still under development.
