Generalized Reed - Solomon codes from algebraic geometry

A few years ago Tsfasman { et al.,} using results from algebraic geometry, showed that there is a sequence of codes which are generalizations of Goppa codes and which exceed the Gilbert-Varshamov bound. We show that a similar sequence of codes (in fact, the duals of the previous codes) can be found by generalizing the construction of Reed-Solomon codes. Our approach has the advantage that it uses less complicated concepts from algebraic geometry.