Re: Octave 3.1.55 available for ftp

[Thomas Treichl]

John W. Eaton schrieb:
> A new snapshot of Octave is now available from ftp.octave.org in the
> directory /pub/octave/bleeding-edge:
>
>   f4d334be8a5385d9845db052981476cb  octave-3.1.54-3.1.55.patch.bz2
>   4fa8c371c80dd8eac22ce888e26d0f10  octave-3.1.54-3.1.55.patch.gz
>   f49b03315b94a268066390e5a8a7fe12  octave-3.1.55.tar.bz2
>   24eb35ead7618e9f012f47072490bc87  octave-3.1.55.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
>   -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
>
> The snapshot is tagged in the usual way (ss-3-1-55) 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...

Hi,

without making the really big noise on the Help and the Octave-Forge
mailing lists I created development versions of Octave.app 3.1.55 for
PPC and i386 Macs and I uploaded these to the usual place at
Sourceforge. I keep these binaries in the download section just for a
few days but then remove them once again to not confuse users to use
this *unstable testing* versions instead of the *stable* 3.0.x
series. These binaries are far from being perfect but they should work
and should give you a first impression about the next great Octave
release.

If you already are familiar with GNU Octave and/or earlier versions of
Octave.app then please try these unstable development binaries and
give feedback, good or bad.

There have been a lot of changes since Octave.app 3.0.x. I will
summarize some of these changes here but for a full documentation I
suggest that you read the NEWS file of GNU Octave and the Readme.html
file of the compressed disc images. There are some more changes left
that need to be done for the next Octave.app snapshot, but just for
trying what has happened in the last year or so these binaries are
good enough. Here are the major changes:

- Octave.app and Gnuplot.app now require Mac OS X version 10.4.x on
  both platforms. I will no longer build future versions of Octave.app
  (3.1.55 or higher) for PPC against SDK 10.3.9 because of missing and
  outdated libraries of the Mac OS X 10.3.9 system. The PPC processor
  requirement is a G4 or better.

- All Fortran sources of the necessary libraries and GNU Octave 3.1.55
  have been compiled with the g95 Fortran compiler (stable version
  0.91, March 2008 available from www.g95.org for 10.4.x systems). The
  f2c/fort77 Fortran compiler combination that has been used in the
  2.9.x and 3.0.x releases of Octave.app will no longer be used for
  Octave.app 3.1.55 or higher if there are no bigger problems with
  g95. The g95 Fortran compiler now and in the future is included in
  Octave.app.

- Somebody on a PPC platform please tries to install odepkg-0.6.5
  which I made available in the Octave/Mac download area. On problems
  please use the -verbose flag and report back, if successful then
  report back please, too. This is a good way to check if I set up g95
  on the PPC platform correctly.

- GNU Octave 3.1.55 now comes with the "eigs" function which uses the
  Arpack library in the background. There is no need to install
  Octave-Forge's Arpack package anymore.

- GNU Octave 3.1.55 now comes with the "image" function and
  others. The image function uses the GraphicksMagic library. I
  compiled GraphicsMagick with support for further external libraries
  libjpeg, libpng and libtiff but there are still many more backends
  available with GraphicksMagick
  (cf. http://www.graphicsmagick.org/formats.html). I did not compile
  GraphicsMagick against *all* available external libraries
  (cf. http://www.graphicsmagick.org/README.html#add-on-libraries-programs).

- GNU Octave 3.1.55 now comes with an alternative builtin OpenGL-based
  graphics backend. You can switch to the new backend with the command
    backend ("fltk");
  Switch back to the gnuplot default backend with the command
    __remove_fltk__ ();
    backend ("gnuplot");

- There currently are known problems with the OpenGL-based graphics
  backend on the Mac platform that need not to be reported (I wanted
  to have a look at these problems in detail but didn't have the time
  to do it - but it would be great if you can help fixing these
  problems):

  Calling 'exit' or 'clear all' if backend ("fltk") is active crashes
  Octave.app, the workaround for this is to call __remove_fltk__ ();
  before you call 'exit' or 'clear all' or you register this function
  to be called before exit with 'atexit ("__remove_fltk__")'.

  Resizing graphics windows with the mouse currently doesn't work. The
  workaround for this is to use the get and set functions instead, for
  example
    get (gcf, 'position');
    set (gcf, 'position', [A(1:2), A(3:4) .* 1.5]);

- Octave.app and Gnuplot.app now can be installed in any place of your
  filesystem. As long as both programs will be installed in the same
  directory Octave.app will automatically find and use Gnuplot.app
  (even if you have installed another gnuplot binary somewhere else).

- I did some experiments with Gnuplot.app 4.2.4 and I included
  AquaTerm.app (beside AquaTerm framework which normally should be
  enough) inside of Gnuplot.app for users who still have problems with
  the AquaTerm backend (if the graphics window doesn't open without
  explecitely installing AquaTerm.app). If you didn't have had such
  problems with earlier versions of Gnuplot.app then change

    DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH="${ROOT}/lib:${DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH}" \
      open "${ROOT}/lib/AquaTerm.app"

  into

    # DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH="${ROOT}/lib:${DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH}" \
    #   open "${ROOT}/lib/AquaTerm.app"

  in file Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot before you use
  Gnuplot.app 4.2.4 for the first time. The comments will become the
  default in the future (because otherwise new windows always take the
  keyboard and mouse control over all other windows and AquaTerm.app
  is not needed with 99% of our Macs). I didn't have had the time to
  change this back and to rebuild another Gnuplot.app for both
  platforms right now.

- If you want to help developing GNU Octave with the latest sources
  available then consider using the selfupdate.sh shell script which
  is available beside all other build scripts at

http://octave.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/octave/trunk/octave-forge/admin/MacOSX/Octave.app

  to manually update your Octave.app with the latest GNU Octave
  sources. Before you use this script I recommend that you *carefully*
  read all the comments inside.

- The md5 checksums of the compressed disc images are:
    MD5 (octave-3.1.55-i386.dmg) = a12a7643b0165be7ad3408f0bf4c324e
    MD5 (octave-3.1.55-ppc.dmg) = c39a335746a9aec464e86db035cc082a

That's it from my side,

  Thomas