Octave 3.3.53 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:

  286f48177d40ae2f3e548c96e4699b55  octave-3.3.52-3.3.53.patch.bz2
  2ab48a1d963ac0b7a208447ae207c4b5  octave-3.3.52-3.3.53.patch.gz
  3b5fd12eef1910b4b7fcc55c65f7261d  octave-3.3.53.tar.bz2
  884af7c5e2e1b9b2ab3da153c626a467  octave-3.3.53.tar.gz

  -rw-r--r--  1 506 1012   585720 Oct 19 08:43 octave-3.3.52-3.3.53.patch.bz2
  -rw-r--r--  1 506 1012   706340 Oct 19 08:43 octave-3.3.52-3.3.53.patch.gz
  -rw-r--r--  1 506 1012 13914012 Oct 19 08:43 octave-3.3.53.tar.bz2
  -rw-r--r--  1 506 1012 16352245 Oct 19 08:43 octave-3.3.53.tar.gz

The snapshot is tagged in the usual way (ss-3-3-53) 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