Octave 3.1.51 available for ftp

[John W. Eaton]

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

  389be5a9f130f369d598795bc97100a9  octave-3.1.51.tar.bz2
  4d339148860fe12fc27fa4b5a32c6d21  octave-3.1.51.tar.gz
  5470c0ef59bfa74bb84fc678709cdb1e  octave-3.1.50-3.1.51.patch.bz2
  f95947a49ebf8344f3d9bf31d6acfc6f  octave-3.1.50-3.1.51.patch.gz

  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 10709063 Jul 22 15:26 octave-3.1.51.tar.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012 12282601 Jul 22 15:28 octave-3.1.51.tar.gz
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012    29803 Jul 22 15:28 octave-3.1.50-3.1.51.patch.bz2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 506 1012    32515 Jul 22 15:28 octave-3.1.50-3.1.51.patch.gz

The snapshot is tagged in the usual way (ss-3-1-51) in the Mercurial
archive and will be marked as the "development" version of
Octave on the download page of the Octave web site.

A number of configuration problems that appeared in the previous
snapshot have been fixed.

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-2008-07-21 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 commands

  input_event_hook ("__fltk_redraw__");
  __init_fltk__ ();
  set (0, "defaultfigure__backend__", "fltk");

I'm sure there will be a simpler way to do this once the new backend
code is more mature.

jwe