Burkhard Hoefling
Fachbereich Mathematik
Universitaet Mainz
55099 Mainz
Germany

Dear GAP forum,

I would like to announce a new version of my port of GAP for the
Macintosh. It can be downloaded from the pub/incoming directory at
ftp.math.rwth-aachen.de.

Actually, this is not just an update of my former port, but a
completely new one. GAP for the Macintosh (GAP 3.4.2 PT 1.0) is now a
'real' Macintosh application, at least as far as this is possible for
a command-line oriented system. PT stands for PlainText, a freeware
text editor by Mel Park, parts of which I have used for my GAP port.

I hope that, besides the alternative pointed out by Michael Smith in
the forum in the beginning of September, packages, there is still a
need for a 'real' Macintosh GAP. Although Michael's alternative semms
likely to solve all the problems using packages, it also has two
significant disadvantages: firstly that MacMiNT does not run on the
PowerMac (and I personally think that there will be no PowerMac
version, since it is an Atari emulator after all), and secondly, that
it does not support virtual memory, which is extremely useful if
running memory-consuming packages from within GAP.

My port consists of two files, both containing self-extracting
archives in MacBinary format.

bin3r4p2-mac-syc-pt10.sea.bin (eecutables)
src3r4p2-mac-syc-pt10.sea.bin (source files)

In order to run GAP, you only need the first file. If you want to
compile GAP for the Macintosh yourself, e. g. if you want to build
a native PowerMac version, you also need the source files.

Here's a short summary of the features of my new port.

- log window is now a real text editing window; scrolling and
resizing of GAP's log window is now possible
- up to 8 additional file editing windows
- separate Help window; improved help facilities
including "hyperlinks"
- can open and print documents
- can execute other applications (via GAP's Exec () function)
- can use an external editor (via GAP's Edit () function)
- now accepts both Macintosh and Unix style pathnames
- resolves alias files and alias folders
- during program startup, options can be set in a preferences
dialog
- GAP is more cooperative when running in the background
- does not use Symantec's console library any more, so it should be
possible to compile GAP for the Macintosh with other compilers
and for the PowerMac
- doesn't use the LoMem interface (which might cause problems
when compiling GAP on a Power Mac)

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a native Power Mac version of GAP,
but I hope that someone will be able to compile my port on a Power
Mac
and provide a Power Mac version. (Please contact me if you would like
to do so and need some further assistance!).

Please send any comments and bug reports concerning the Macintosh
port
of GAP directly to me.

If you use my part of GAP, I would appreciate if you dropped me a
note,
possibly containing information about your system (machine type, main
memory, system version, do you use virtual memory?)

I hope you will like the new port.

Burkhard.