Symmetric polynomials and some good codes (Q5927543)

The authors give a new construction method for codes over GF\((q)\). This method can be viewed as a kind of generalization of the Reed-Solomon construction. The constructed codes often achieve parameters that are at least equal to the ones listed in the (dynamic) tables of Brouwer (http://www.win.tue.nl/\(\sim\)aeb/voorlincod.html). The authors claim also improvements on this table, but these improvements are not given. The code from the given examples with parameters \(q=5\), \(n=43\), \(k=10\), \(d=21\) is not as good as the one in Brouwer's table which has \(d=23\)! But as I already noticed, Brouwer's table is a dynamic one, it changes from time to time so comparing results with this table is dangerous. If results really improve upon the table they are incorporated in it. It is unclear (to me) whether this has happened with the authors' results.