GNU Octave 3.8.0 Released

[John W. Eaton]

The Octave developers are pleased to announce a major new release of
GNU Octave, version 3.8.0.

One of the biggest new features for Octave 3.8 is a graphical user
interface. It is the one thing that users have requested most often
over the last few years and now it is almost ready. But because it is
not quite as polished as we would like, we have decided to wait until
the 4.0.x release series before making the GUI the default interface
(until then, you can use the --force-gui option to start the GUI).

Given the length of time and the number of bug fixes and improvements
since the last major release Octave, we also decided against delaying
the release any longer. So please enjoy the 3.8 release of Octave and
the preview of the new GUI. We believe it is working reasonably well,
but we also know that there are some obvious rough spots and many
things that could be improved.

Please see http://octave.org/NEWS-3.8.html for a more complete list of
significant user-visible changes in this release.

WE ALSO NEED YOUR HELP to fix the remaining problems, complete the
GUI, and improve the overall user experience for both novices and
experts alike:

  * If you are a skilled software developer, you can help by
    contributing your time to help with Octave's development.
    See http://octave.org/get-involved.html for more info.

  * If Octave does not work properly, you are encouraged to report the
    problems you find.  Bug reporting guidelines are available at
    http://octave.org/bugs.html

  * Whether you are a user or developer, you can help to fund the
    project.  Octave development takes a lot of time and expertise.
    Your contributions help Octave continue to improve.  The Free
    Software Foundation's Working Together for Free Software campaign
    fund now accepts donations for Octave at
    https://my.fsf.org/donate/working-together/octave

We hope you find Octave to be useful. Please help us make it even
better for the future!


The source code for Octave 3.8.0 is available for download at:

  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave

Please see http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html for mirror sites around
the world.  Or you may use http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/octave, which will
redirect automatically to a nearby mirror.

Links to binary (executable) versions for various systems will be
listed at http://octave.org/download.html as they become
available.

As always, many people contributed to this Octave release.  A complete
list of contributors may be found in the Octave manual.


About Octave:

GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended
for numerical computations.  It provides capabilities for the
numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems and for
performing other numerical experiments.  It also provides extensive
graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation.  Octave
is normally used through its interactive command line interface, but
it can also be used to write non-interactive programs.  The Octave
language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily
portable.  A full description of Octave capabilities is available at
http://octave.org/doc/interpreter/index.html.