Octave 3.0

[John W. Eaton]

I'd like to try to come up with a list of must-have items for the next
major release of Octave, then we can start making sure that all those
items are done (not necessarily complete, but at least implemented
well enough to be usable).

My current top 10 list is, more or less in order of importance:

  * some support for MPI

  * N-dimensional arrays

  * sparse matrices

  * clean up the load-save mess

  * extend cell arrays, struct arrays, and function handles to also be
    N-dimensional

  * finish implementation of cell arrays and struct arrays:
      -- cell(idx) = [] to delete elements
      -- a(1).x = 1; a(2).x = 2; a.x => c.s. list, [a.x] => num array
      -- allow [x{:}] = f (...) to work
      -- and other little details like this...

  * [ ... ] should concatenate array-like objects other than matrices

  * inline functions

  * private functions

  * bring the manual up to date


Yes, this is a relatively large list, but I think it is possible to do
most of these things in the next six months or so.

It will probably help Octave a lot to have all of these things in a
new "stable"[2] release.  Perhaps that can happen by sometime this
coming (northern) summer (that would only be about a year later than I
had hoped for the last time I tried making a list like this).

Comments?

Thanks,

jwe


  [1] MPI is at the top because we have some code that is almost ready
      to be checked in.  The manual is at the bottom because I usually
      don't like working on it unless I can focus only on the manual
      for a few weeks.

  [2] Even if we call it "stable" I don't expect to try to do some
      kind of split "stable" vs. "development" releases unless someone
      steps forward to maintain the stable release.  It simply takes
      too much effort (for me, anywya) to try to maintain two
      branches.