			Dear Emacs, please make this -*-Text-*- mode!


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	*	    SPAM VERSION 0.21  			 *
	*						 *
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    o 	New functions bandwidth, permutation, mle[.nomean][.spam],
    	neg2loglikelihood[.spam].    		

    o	Renamed adiag.spam to bdiag.spam.

    o	Cleaned up argument naming with the rmvnorm.* 
    	suite.

    o   Varios Fortran code, R code and help file 
    	improvements.
	

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	*						 *
	*	    SPAM VERSION 0.20  			 *
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                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.20-3
    
    o	Resolved dependency issues.

                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.20-1,2
    
    o	Minor changes to pass the CRAN test.


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.20-0
    
    o	New demos, test functions, datasets.

    o	Method t for spam.chol.NgPeyton.

    o	Method Math2 now with signature digits="ANY". 	

    o	Update in rmvnorm.canonical, can take a Cholesky structure
    	as argument. 

    o   New functionality for a sparse times a full matrix 
    	multiplication.

    o	Minor ajustment in memory allocation of chol.	


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	*	    SPAM VERSION 0.15  			 *
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                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-6
    
    o   Minor change in Fortran routines to accomodate some Intel 
    	compilers (pointed out by Tim Hoar).


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-5

    o   New function adiag.spam, creation of block diagonal sparse
    	matrices. No method though.

    o	New functions rmvnorm.spam, rmvnorm.canonical and
    	rmvnorm.prec to draw multivariate normals.

    o	New function apply.spam, similar functionality as apply.		

    o   drop is implemented now when subsetting a sparse matrix 
    	with a binary matrix.

    o   Major overhaul to nearest.dist: zeros are not included.
	Old parameters are kept for backwards compatibility.

    o	Orders/complexities of major algorithms are now described 
	in the help 'complexity'. 

    o   Using packageStartupMessage in .onAttach.

    o   Code clean up and help improvements. Changes reflecting the
    	change to UZH.

    o	Bugfix in assinging via a nx2 matrix.
 

		
                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-4

    o	Changes in help files. Minor code improvements.
   
    o   New function powerboost.
	 
    o	Changes to if(getRversion() >= "x.y"), required for R 2.10.

   

                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-3

    o	Several bug fixes in the demos due to the changes in 
	the previous versions.	

    o	Several minior changes in the help files to compile with
	the new help parser and to correct for typos.

    o	Added the demos into the tests directory. Additionally,
	tests contains now the proper Rout.saves files.
	
    o	In test files, library( spam, warn.conflict=FALSE)
	is used to avoid masking messages in R-2.8.0.
	Timing output in test files is suppressed.
	
    o	Added trivial headers to most files. 


    o	Bug fix in spam.list(), negative values were not correctly
	handled.

    o	Bug fix in subsetting (occured when subsetting very 
	sparse matrices, memory allocation problem).	


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-2

    o	Method all.equal for matrix-spam signature. 

    o   Bug fix in Fortran function of nearest.dist. Numerical
	instabilities could return NaN on diagonal. Additionally,
	overhaul of tests/dist.R.

    o	Several minor improvements in the help files as well
	as in function nearest.dist and tests/*.R.


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-1

    o   Improvements in the nearest.dist function. The diagonals
	are now handled consistenly.

    o	Symmetry check criterion for Cholesky decomposition has been
	relaxed from (2+eps)*eps to 100*eps for an easier handling when
	working with great circle distance induced covariance matrices.
	Same cutoff is used with eigen. Instead of using norm, 
	we use essentially an isSymmetric.spam test.

    o	Methods isSymmetric and all.equal for spam. 
	
    o	Methods image and display for spam.chol.NgPeyton.

    o	Method as.spam for distance class implemented.

    o	Complete rewrite of spam.list. Method as.spam for lists
	are implemented as well. 

    o   Method spam for spam objects (possibility to rearrange the 
	dimension) has been eliminated. The approach was based on
	creating the full matrix and assigning it back to a spam 
	object. 
	
    o   Binary subsetting and subassigning is implemented.

    o	Bug fix: the Cholesky Fortran routine checks if diagonal 
	elements are available (and positive).

    o   Bug fix: in dim<-.spam

    o	Minor improvements in the help files as well as the following
	R functions: norm, .spam.matmul.


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.15-0

    o   The devel versions of 14-x have been sitting around for 
	a while and I was inconsistent with the devel/gold numbering. 
	To avoid any confusion, I have decided to go to the next 
	minor version. An additional reason supporting this is 
	that the version number identification has changed over 
	the 0.14-devel.


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	*	    SPAM VERSION 0.14  			 *
	*						 *
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                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.14-x

    o   A few rudimentary functions to change between the compressed
	sparse row formats of the packages SparseM and Matrix.
	Just the functions, no S3/S4 constructs available.

    o	Functionality to read matrices stored in the Harwell-Boeing 
	or MatrixMarket formats.Read MatrixMarket.

    o	Rewritten cbind.spam and rbind.spam. Both can take now 
	numeric and spam objects. cbind.spam calls now Fortran 
	code and is now very fast. Rewrite of their help.  	

    o	Implemented spam.list to go from a index based list to a 
	spam matrix. The function triplets does the inverse.
	
    o   forwardsolve and backsolve methods for spam objects.

    o   Implemented the function 'dim<-' for spam objects.

    o   Method diag and as.matrix for spam.chol.NgPeyton.

    o	eps is now tested for being at least double precision.
	
    o	as.spam.xxx and spam.yyy functions have been streamlined.
		
    o	Initializing an empty spam matrix causes a warning but still
	coerces to a zero matrix, see new("spam",entries=rep(1,0))

    o	Eliminated bug in subsetting (occuring when subsetting 
	for an empty matrix). Clean out subsetting and assigning.

    o	Include a inst subdirectory containing this file, which
	is renamed to NEWS. Once we have reached a stable version
	I will maintain a proper CHANGELOG file in the root 
	directory.

    o	Proper method handling for kronecker and bug fixes in 
	kronecker.spam. 
		
    o	Saved the datasets UScounties.storder/ndorder as spam
	objects as assumed by demo article-jss.

    o	Implemented many 'identical' structures and homogenized zero
	matrix handling, throughout the R code. int0, ..., int2 are 
	internally defined integers.

    o	Similar changes as for 13-3. Additionally, considerable 
	improvements in	help, file structure, tests, timing, etc.


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.14-0

	Major revision. Slight loss of backwards compatibility.

    o	New demo article-jss.

    o   New variable spam.version, similar to the R version
	variable.
	 
    o	Change and adding of a few option names, for example 
	cholsymmetrycheck, cholpivotcheck, cholupdatesingular, 
	dopivoting, safemode, ... 
	See help files for details.

    o	Complete rewrite of chol. The argument ordering is 
	now called pivot, more consistent with the generic 
	function. Two different orderings are implemented.
	Uses the new option cholsymmetrycheck.

    o	Similar changes as in chol in determinant.spam.	

    o	New function update.spam.chol.NgPeyton.
    
    o	Invisible/minor changes in method c for spam, in solve.spam, 
	determinant.chol.NgPeyton 

    o	The class spam.chol.NgPeyton is defined differently.
	Accordingly, print and summary methods are updated.
	Notably, fill-in ratios are given with summary. 
	Summary also hands back the length of the vectors holding the 
	factor and the column indices.
	
    o	New methods for spam.chol.NgPeyton, namely, dim, length, c,
	dim<-, and length<-. The latter two giving simply errors.

    o   Along the redefinition of the class spam.chol.NgPeyton,
	forwardsolve.spam and backsolve.spam are updated. 
	Use now the option dopivoting.

    o	kronecker.r is implemented.  

    o	nearest.dist, a function to calculate close distances 
	within one or two sets of locations is implemented.
	Roughly speaking, it is the union of dist in base and 
	rdist/rdist.earth in fields. (comes with options
	nearestdistincreasefactor and nearestdistnnz). 

    o   print and show now emphasize that the non-zero elements 
	are row-wise printed. 
	
    o	UScounties is a dataset containing the adjacency matrix 
	of the first and second order neighbors of the counties
	of the lower 48 US states.

    o	Some changes in help files, especially in the *-class 
	files.
    
    o	Eliminated warnings issued when compiling.

    o	Minor R and Fortran code cleaning. 

    o	Along the new features, update of CHANGELOG, todo,
	NAMESPACE files, etc.


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	*						 *
	*	    SPAM VERSION SERIES 0.13  		 *
	*						 *
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                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.13-3

    o   Minor changes in R and Fortran code to eliminate warnings.

    o   In diag()'s argument list, drop the explicit default (' = n').
        As is now in R-2.7.


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.13-2

    o   New spam.options and getOption functions. .Spam
        as a variable is not visible anymore.

    o   Retrieving information from the DESCRIPTION file directly
        (thanks to Roger Bivand).


                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.13-1

    o   Minor Fortran Changes for g77 compatibility. Thanks to 
        Roger Bivand.

    o	Updated DESCRIPTION file.

    
                CHANGES IN R VERSION 0.13

    o   Updated NAMESPACE (for versions > 2.5).

    o	Some changes in help files.
    
    o	Cleaned Fortran source files (eliminated unused 
	subroutines and used the posted complier output to 
	straighten details). 

    o	Implemented more efficient transpose Fortran code.
        This also eliminates a bug when transposing a 1 row 
	matrix.

    o	Eliminated bug when assigning with a 1 row matix.

    o	Eliminated bug (Fortran code) that could potentially 
	occur when assigning.

    o	Eliminated bug when plotting a 1 row matix.

    o	Minor R code cleaning.



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	*	    SPAM VERSION 0.12  			 *
	*						 *
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    o   Updated NAMESPACE and DESCRIPTION file.

    o	print and summary pass back NULL instead of the 
	object.

    o   Changed to prod(x@dimension) instead of nrow*ncol to 
	overcome integer overflow for very large matrices.

    o   Introduced a prototype in the definition of spam 
	and spam.chol.*.

    o   .Spam$safemode also determines if a spam object is 
	tested for validity, as well as for NAOK.

    o   In many functions sparse matrix construction is 
	done manually using slots (and check=FALSE, if 
	approprate).

    o	Increased the value of symmetry criteria to 
	(2+eps)*eps, as each element can be off by eps, 
	subtraction leads to a 2*eps offset and yet we are 
	symmetric.

    o   Major restructuration of chol/det with elimination
	of auxiliarychol. 

    o	Methods chol/backsolve/forwarsolve now call the *.spam
	functions.

    o 	Many internal changes to favour speed and efficiency.

    o 	Bug fix in .spam.elemul. occuring when the result is the 
	zero matrix.
