   Copyright (C)  2000    Daniel A. Atkinson  <DanAtk@aol.com>
   Copyright (C)  2004    Ivano Primi  <ivprimi@libero.it>    

   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
   are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
   notice and this notice are preserved.

******************************************************************************

                   HIGH PRECISION ARITHMETIC (abbr. HPA) LIBRARY

                                    Summary

                 The High Precision Arithmetic Library implements a high
                 precision floating point arithmetic together with a
                 comprehensive set of support functions. The general
                 areas covered by these functions include:

                     o Extended Precision Arithmetic   (both real and complex)
                     o Extended Precision Math Library (both real and complex)
                     o Applications of High Precision Computation

                 The math library support includes evaluation of
                 trigonometric, inverse trigonometric, hyperbolic,
                 logarithm, and exponential functions at the same
                 precision as the floating point math itself.


** History **

The HPA library comes from a branch of the source code of the CCMath library,
which is a work by Daniel A. Atkinson.
I took the source code in the 'xarm' section
of the CCMath library, I modified a relevant part of it,
then I added functions for complex arithmetic and
the makefiles to compile the library on a GNU/Linux(R) or Unix(R) system.
But the initial work was done by Daniel A. Atkinson, which 
released the code of the CCMath Library under GNU Lesser 
General Public License. This made possible that I could modify and 
redistribute it under the same terms.

** License **

The HPA (abbreviation of HIGH PRECISION ARITHMETIC Library) is
copyrighted by Ivano Primi (ivprimi@libero.it) and
Daniel A. Atkinson (the author of the original code). 
As for the source code of the CCMath Library, the source code
of the HPA library is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General 
Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation; 
either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

The HPA library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc.,  51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA.

You can contact me by email at the address

	ivprimi (at) libero (dot) it                  .


** Installation instructions            **

Please, read the file INSTALL to know how 
you can build and install the HPA library.
