JACAL is an interactive symbolic mathematics program like Maxima. JACAL can manipulate and simplify equations, scalars, vectors, matrices, and tensors of (single and multiple valued) algebraic expressions containing numbers, variables, radicals, and transcendental functions.

JACAL is a GNU package.

News

The transcendental functions exp, %expt, log, tan, atan, cot, sec, cos, sin, csc, acot, asec, acos, asin, acsc, and %W (the Lambert-W function) are now supported!

(::~): Added inverse-function operator.

(::): Now defines differential recurrences (ODE).

(math:equal?): Safe replacement for equal? yields significant performance improvement.

Repair of many bugs. Variable names and some code reorganized.

Jacal's home page has changed to https://www.gnu.org/software/jacal/

Example

Downloading rw.math, then typing batch("rw.math"); into a Jacal session will compute tensors for The Robertson-Walker Cosmology Model.

Theory

• Rational Function Integration (PDF)
• Algebra and the Lambda Calculus (PDF)
• Algorithm to Remove Radicals From Denominators

Development

• JACAL project at Savannah

Download

Jacal can be found on the main GNU ftp server (download Jacal via HTTPS, download Jacal via HTTP or download Jacal via FTP), and its mirrors; please use a mirror if possible.

Documentation

Documentation for Jacal is online, as is documentation for most GNU software. It can also be accessed by running info jacal or man jacal, or by looking at /usr/share/doc/jacal/, or similar directories on your system. A brief summary is available by running jacal --help.

Mailing lists

Jacal has the following mailing lists:

• JACAL discussion mailing list

Announcements about Jacal and most other GNU software are made on the info-gnu mailing list (archives).

Security reports that should not be made immediately public can be sent directly to the maintainer. If there is no response to an urgent issue, you can escalate to the general security mailing list for advice.

Getting involved

Development of Jacal, and GNU in general, is a volunteer effort, and you can contribute. For information, please read How to help GNU. If you'd like to get involved, it's a good idea to join the discussion mailing list (see above).

Development tools

For development sources, issue trackers, and other information, please see the Jacal project page at savannah.gnu.org.

Translating

To translate the program messages into other languages, please refer to the Translation Project page for Jacal. New translations or updates to the existing strings will not be incorporated into Jacal if they are sent elsewhere. For more information, see the Translation Project home page.

Maintainer

Jacal is currently maintained by Aubrey Jaffer. Please use the mailing lists for contact.

Licensing

Jacal is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.