***********************
                     *                     *
                     *        LSNNO        *
                     *                     *
                     ***********************


                            PURPOSE
                            -------

LSNNO is a  routine for  solving  nonlinear  optimization problems with linear
network constraints.  See the user's guide for more details.

                           DISCLAIMER
                           ----------

LSNNO is supplied without any guaranty of  any kind, implied  or explicit.  In
particular, it is not guaranteed that it  is suitable for any specific purpose
nor that it  is free of  error.  It should  not be relied  on  as the basis to
solve a problem  whose incorrect solution could  result in injury to person or
property.   If LSNNO or any of its  constituent  parts is employed  in  such a
manner, it is  at the user's own risk  and the authors  disclaim all liability
for such misuse.

LSNNO  is  distributed   "as is".  In   particular,   no maintenance, support,
troubleshooting or subsequent upgrade is implied.

                          DISTRIBUTION
                          ------------

LSNNO can be  re-distributed at the  express  condition that  it contains  the
present README.FIRST file in its entirety, in particular the disclaimer of 2).

LSNNO is a copyright of FUNDP (Namur), Belgium.

                  DOCUMENTATION AND USER'S GUIDE
                  ------------------------------

The documentation and  users' guide of LSNNO  are contained in the  LaTeX file
"lsnno.tex".

A full description of the software and a discussion of its performance is
provided in

  Ph. L. Toint and D. Tuyttens,
  "LSNNO: a Fortran subroutine for solving large-scale nonlinear network
  optimization problems",
  ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 18(3), pp. 308-328, 1992.

                            PRECISION
                            ---------

LSNNO is only availbale in double precision.

                           USE OF BLAS
                           -----------

LSNNO requires that the user has an executable version of several the routines
of BLAS level 1, as described for instance in

  J.J. Dongarra, J.R. Bunch, C.B. Moler and G.W. Stewart,
  "Linpack user's guidse",
  SIAM, Philadelphia, 1979

The necessary routines are supplied in the file "blas1.f".  BLAS level1 is
also available via NETLIB.

                       SYSTEM DEPENDENCIES
                       -------------------

It is also requested that the user provieds a Fortran subroutine whose calling
sequence is

    CALL SECOND( TIME )

whose REAL argument TIME contains, after the call, the cpu time used since the
beginning of  the  execution of LSNNO.  A   version  suitable under  Ultrix is
supplied in the file "second.f".

                       INTERACTIVE DRIVER
                       ------------------

An interactive  driver for the   LSNNO   routine  is    provided in  the  file
"exmain.f". This driver is  compiled and linked to LSNNO  on unix  systems by
the supplied "makefile". It is then enough to issue the command

   make lsnno

to build the executable file "lsnno" in the current directory.

Note that compiler options (FFLAGS) in this makefile might need to be changed,
depending on the system and harware used.

                       RUNNING AN EXAMPLE
                       ------------------


Good luck!

D. Tuyttens and Ph. Toint.
Fall 1992.