Yes, I wrote to Mark. I asked him for permission to post his response in toto here. But he did not reply to that email. His response was *very* helpful and I suspect anyone wanting to reimplement Sympow would do well to contact Mark directly and also John Cremona.
The two important points I got from Mark's reply were: 1) Mark is definitely *not* intending to "maintain" Sympow as a software project. He "maintains" it primarily for his own use, and if it runs on his machine that is enough for him. 2) The modular degree stuff, in the range that it is feasible, would probably work just fine if we ditched the QD stuff and just replaced it with doubles. If this is all we really require from Sympow, it makes good sense to do this. Long doubles are evil! Bill. On 20 Aug, 17:28, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 16 August 2010 23:48, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > On 16 Aug, 22:50, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> > >> wrote: > >> > Is there even a link from which Sympow can be downloaded so that one > >> > can look through the code to see if it is worth salvaging. I can't > >> > even find a webpage for Mark Watkins at the moment, let alone sympow. > > >> > I honestly suspect that Mark has just moved on to other projects. I > >> > doubt very much if his work on Magma precludes him from maintaining > >> > this package. I've personally worked with him on projects since he > >> > joined the Magma group and we both made use of each other's code > >> > without even asking the question. > > >> The above is just speculation without even asking him. > > > I'll email him, as I speak to him quasi-regularly by email. And I know > > for a fact he has been working on other things. I personally worked on > > them with him, and he discussed other projects he's done too. I don't > > think I speculated in any of the three sentences here. But I will > > explicitly ask him about the status of sympow. > > Did you do this Bill? Did you get any response? > > Dave -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org