Computing Kazhdan--Lusztig cells for unequal parameters

Following Lusztig, we consider a Coxeter group $W$ together with a weight function $L$. This gives rise to the pre-order relation $\leq_{L}$ and the corresponding partition of $W$ into left cells. We introduce an equivalence relation on weight functions such that, in particular, $\leq_{L}$ is constant on equivalent classes. We shall work this out explicitly for $W$ of type $F_4$ and check that several of Lusztig's conjectures concerning left cells with unequal parameters hold in this case, even for those parameters which do not admit a geometric interpretation. The proofs involve some explicit computations using {\sf CHEVIE}.