Re: development snapshot

[John W. Eaton]

On  3-Sep-2009, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

| On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 9:05 PM, John W. Eaton<address@hidden> wrote:
| > On 29-Jul-2009, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
| >
| > | what about making a development snapshot soon, perhaps now?
| > | Further, src/version.h still shows version 3.1.55 and api-v37. Is it
| > | OK if I change it to 3.3.1 and api-v38?
| >
| > Sorry for not responding to this message earlier.  Is now a good time
| > to make a new snapshot?
| 
| I think so.
| 
| > If there are no objections, I will try to
| > start making more regular snapshots again.  Should we start with
| > 3.3.1?
| 
| I never understood why there was 3.1.50 instead of 3.1.0, but if
| there's a good explanation I've missed...

3.1.0 looks like a stable release version, 3.1.50 doesn't (at least to
me).

| As far as I'm concerned, I've implemented most of my ideas, except
| finishing fminbnd and some mapper improvements (erfinv, erfcx).
| Everything's in NEWS (I see all entries are mine; isn't something
| missing here?). A little more cleanup in liboctave is also possible.
| 
| I don't know what else is wanted.

My immediate plans are to work more on 64-bit support.  This mostly
means improved configure checks, but we also need to have large file
support.  I'm not sure what to do with Octave's binary file types
(load/save) as those have fixed 32-bit integer sizes for storing array
dimensions.  I guess this is why Matlab is now using some kind of HDF5
file format?

| New-style class support may be nice, but given the current status, is
| it realistic to expect?

I would be happy to see someone working on it, but I think that
project is too large to expect it to be working by the next stable
release.

| Concerning the FLTK backend or other plotting projects, I'm
| completely ignorant.

Likewise, I'm almost completely ignorant, but I would like to see this
improved to the point where it is useable by the next stable release,
then possibly switch to it as the default for the following stable
release.

| In any case, I'd appreciate a snapshot soon, perhaps now, despite
| features still missing.

OK.  I'll try to make one later today or tomorrow.

jwe