geomview

[munzner]

   1. Is there a symmetry group which creates this diamond lattice?

Yes, it's one of the 230 Euclidean symmetry groups. You can use the
Eucsyms external module to visualize these. Offhand I don't know which
one it is; I'll forward the question to the author of the module (Olaf
Holt). You should be able to find it in some standard reference on
crystallography.

   2. We are both physics students with very little knowledge in
      group theory/algebra - may you recommend a good text about
      this subject?

I'll let someone else answer this one.

   3. Which version is actual?

In our anonymous ftp directory, pub/geomview/geomview.tar.Z is the
latest version of all the binaries, documentation, and data. (version
1.3.2) There is an old release of the source in
pub/geomview/old/geomview-src.tar.Z, but we haven't had time yet to
pack up the source for the latest version.

     1. The piping feature sounds very interesting. I familiar with
        C and C++ but not with UNIX system programming.
        I would like to have a not too long example which displays
        graphical information through geomview.

All the external modules are examples of the piping feature.  There's
a module called example in the old source distribution that has a
tutorial to go along with it. Also, the external module binary for
gvclock is human-readable, since it's just an awk script. You can run
any module from the Unix command line to see the commands it normally
pipes to geomview. (Some of the modules use the echo command to wait
for geomview to acknowledge receipt of commands before sending over
more information.)
        
     2. Does a mailing list exist about geomview?

Yes, I just put you on it. Thus far there has been no traffic, though. 

Tamara Munzner          ((555) 555-5555
munzner at geom.umn.edu    The Geometry Center