Octave 3.1.54 available for ftp

[John W. Eaton]

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

  b8194e4118a96e84733cf0206d333351  octave-3.1.54.tar.bz2
  ffd9d96c6efac82563f154f351d021f3  octave-3.1.54.tar.gz
  8aee355eb0dc202fbc4d88409a2fd1ee  octave-3.1.53-3.1.54.patch.bz2
  3ccd77843d316ce07501fe40a3c27ca0  octave-3.1.53-3.1.54.patch.gz

  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 11177218 Mar 07 18:35 octave-3.1.54.tar.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 12929941 Mar 07 18:37 octave-3.1.54.tar.gz
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012   332777 Mar 07 18:33 octave-3.1.53-3.1.54.patch.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012   443167 Mar 07 18:33 octave-3.1.53-3.1.54.patch.gz

The snapshot is tagged in the usual way (ss-3-1-54) 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-2009-03-07 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 command

  backend ("fltk");

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