Package: surf-alggeo-doc (1.0.6+ds-5build1)

visualization of real algebraic geometry -- manual

Surf is a script driven tool to visualize some real algebraic geometry: plane algebraic curves, algebraic surfaces and hyperplane sections of surfaces.

The algorithms should be stable enough not to be confused by curve/surface singularities in codimension greater than one and the degree of the surface or curve. This has been achieved quite a bit. Curves of degree up to 30 and surfaces of degree up to 20 have been drawn successfully. However, there are examples of curves/surfaces of lower degree where surf fails to produce perfect images. This happens especially if the equation of the curve/surface is not reduced. Best results are achieved using reduced equations. On the other hand, surf displays the Fermat-curves accurately for degree up to 98.

Surf is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

This package provides the manual for the script driven tool surf; it also contains some script samples.