Octave 3.1.52 available for ftp

[John W. Eaton]

A new snapshot of Octave is now available for ftp from ftp.octave.org in the
directory /pub/octave/bleeding-edge:

  52a5945e792574ffd7519f7d48f370dc  octave-3.1.52.tar.bz2
  25e0d448fe4c103495982fc95765e700  octave-3.1.52.tar.gz
  2a12ef2bd5721b917c788a3039d93192  octave-3.1.51-3.1.52.patch.bz2
  18086ea4fb815082cc1e0038493c7d76  octave-3.1.51-3.1.52.patch.gz

  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 10742307 Feb 09 21:56 octave-3.1.52.tar.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 12436955 Feb 09 21:58 octave-3.1.52.tar.gz
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012  1306276 Feb 09 21:59 octave-3.1.51-3.1.52.patch.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012  1620539 Feb 09 21:59 octave-3.1.51-3.1.52.patch.gz

The snapshot is tagged in the usual way (ss-3-1-52) in the Mercurial
archive and will be marked as the "development" version of
Octave on the download page of the Octave web site.

Please remember that these snapshots are provided for testing
purposes.  I do not consider them to be Octave releases.  If people
think there will be confusion because of the version number, then we
can add a notice to the Octave startup message.  Changing the version
number to something like ss-2008-07-21 is not an option because it
will cause trouble with typical version comparison functions (for
example, that are sometimes used for building Octave Forge packages).

This snapshot includes the new experimental OpenGL-based graphics
code, but the gnuplot backend is used by default.  Assuming you have
all the required libraries and have built the OpenGL bits properly,
you should be able to switch to the new backend with the commands

  input_event_hook ("__fltk_redraw__");
  __init_fltk__ ();
  set (0, "defaultfigure__backend__", "fltk");

I'm sure there will be a simpler way to do this once the new backend
code is more mature.

PLEASE DO NOT REPORT THAT AXES LABELS AND OTHER TEXT OBJECTS ARE NOT
DISPLAYED WITH THE NEW GRAPHICS BACKEND.  Although the FTGL library is
detected and linked, it is not yet used to actually put text on the
plot window.  We could use a few more hands to help with implementing
that...

jwe