Introduction
General aims

The overall aim of `QPA` is to provide computational tools in basic research in mathematics (algebra). It seeks to furnish users within and outside the area of representation theory of finite dimensional algebras with a computational software package that will help in exploring a problem and testing conjectures. As with all software development, new ideas and question will arise. The ability to study and compute examples will help in proving or disproving well-established questions/conjectures. Furthermore, it will enable us to consider new examples which were not accessible by hand or other means before. In this way, we hope that `QPA` will aid in the development, not only of the area of representation theory of finite dimensional algebras, but also of a broad variety of other areas of mathematics, where such structures occur. In addition we aspire to create a research environment for international cooperation on computational representation theory of finite dimensional algebras.
Installation and system requirements

Since the release of GAP version 4.7.8, the package `QPA` is distributed with GAP, so if you download this version or any later version of GAP, the package `QPA` will be installed at the same time as GAP is installed. Follow the instructions for installing GAP on the web page

http://www.gap-system.org/Download/index.html

After having successfully started GAP, give the command gap> LoadPackage("qpa"); which loads QPA and you can start using QPA.

One can also clone the QPA git repository from https://github.com/gap-packages/qpa to follow the QPA development. Follow the instructions on http://www.math.ntnu.no/~oyvinso/QPA/ to install QPA by cloning the the git repository.