chap1.txt

  
  1 Introduction
  
  
  1.1 What is the purpose of the this package?
  
  Normaliz  [BIRS14]  is  a  software for computations with rational cones and
  affine monoids. It pursues two main computational goals: finding the Hilbert
  basis,  a  minimal  generating  system  of the monoid of lattice points of a
  cone;  and  counting  elements  degree-wise  in  a  generating function, the
  Hilbert  series.  As  a  recent  extension,  Normaliz  can  handle unbounded
  polyhedra.  The  Hilbert  basis  computation  can be considered as solving a
  linear  diophantine  system  of  inhomogeneous  equations,  inequalities and
  congruences.
  
  This  package  encapsulates a libnormaliz cone and gives access to it in the
  GAP  environment.  In  this  way GAP can be used as interactive interface to
  libnormaliz.