			Announcement of CHEVIE
			----------------------

This is to  announce the first   public release of CHEVIE,  a computer
algebra  package for  symbolic  calculations  with  generic  character
tables of groups of Lie type (including  Green functions), Weyl groups
and  Hecke algebras. It is  based on the  computer algebra systems GAP
(Lehrstuhl  D fuer Mathematik,  RWTH Aachen)  and  MAPLE (The Symbolic
Computation Group, University of Waterloo).

CHEVIE is accompanied by a library of generic character tables, tables
of   Green functions, tables of    unipotent characters and  character
tables of Hecke algebras.  Here is a brief sketch of the main features
and contents of CHEVIE.

* Generic ordinary character tables for all series of finite groups of
Lie type of small rank.

* Tables of Green polynomials (for exceptional and classical groups of
low rank, and disconnected groups),  and a program for calculating the
Green polynomials for groups of type A.

* Programs for  working  with these  tables (scalar  products,  tensor
products, structure  constants), constructing new  tables and  viewing
respectively printing them in TeX format.

* Character tables of Hecke algebras for all types  of rank at most 7,
and recursive  algorithms for computing  them for types   A and B (the
formulae  for type B  and rank larger  than 7 give  the correct result
only  conjecturally).   Tables and    programs  for  the  Weyl  groups
themselves are already available through GAP.

*  Programs for computing  Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, left cells and
the corresponding representations for Weyl  groups (effective for rank
at most 4).

*  A   manual  with  a   detailed description   of   the functions and
illustrating examples.

CHEVIE  is   a  joint  project  of  Meinolf   Geck and Goetz  Pfeiffer
(Lehrstuhl D fuer  Mathematik, RWTH Aachen, Templergraben  64, D-52062
Aachen), and Gerhard Hiss,  Frank Luebeck and   Gunter Malle (IWR  der
Universitaet Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 368, D-69120 Heidelberg).
It can be obtained via anonymous ftp through one of the ftp-servers

     samson.math.rwth-aachen.de (Internet number: 137.226.152.6)
     ftp.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Internet number: 129.206.104.40)

'ftp' to one of  the servers mentioned above, login  as user 'ftp' and
give your full e-mail address as password.  CHEVIE is in the directory
'pub/chevie'.         You will find     the two     files 'README' and
'chevie_tar.Z'.   In uncompressed form, CHEVIE  requires  5 MB of disc
space.
