Octave 3.3.51 snapshot 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:

  d43ddf56a4ece1e6ef1118e0f858a594  octave-3.3.51.tar.bz2
  988ea87fced895f2fee093c63c40d8df  octave-3.3.51.tar.gz

  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 12385829 Mar 24 21:15 octave-3.3.51.tar.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 14861639 Mar 24 21:18 octave-3.3.51.tar.gz

The snapshot is tagged in the usual way (ss-3-3-51) 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-2009-09-12 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");

Plots should mostly work, but there are still some problems.  If you
would like to see these graphics features improve at a more rapid
pace, please help with implementing the things you miss most.  We
would like to have "rundemos plot" working correctly before the next
major release.

jwe