octave-forge 2004-02-12 release

Tested against octave-2.1.53 and octave-2.1.40.  Many functions will
also work on earlier versions of Octave.  Use make -k to build what
functions can be built and ignore the rest.

*** WARNING *** if installing in a user directory, octave may crash
immediately on startup.  Either install into a system directory, or
remove the comm/PKG_ADD and sparse/PKG_ADD from the install directory
(octave-2.1.49 on RedHat 7.3 exhibits this problem).

See
<a  
href="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/octave/octave- 
forge/RELEASE-NOTES?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain">RELEASE-NOTES</a>
for a summary  of all releases.

See
<a  
href="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/octave/octave- 
forge/ChangeLog?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain">ChangeLog</a>
for details of every change.

2004-02-11  
===================================================================

Extends support forward to octave 2.1.53 for all oct-files.  Improved
build environment and better testing.  We still need more tests!  If
you need a function and don't see any test cases in it, add some and
send them our way.  See 'help test' for details.

Changes

   - rand/randn: generates a different random number sequence from  
before.

New functions

   - anovan: analysis of variance
   - append_save: add a variable to a save file
   - assert: now supports structure arrays and cell arrays
   - BFGSMin: alternative to bfgs minimizer
   - conv2nan: 2-D convolution which ignores missing data
   - convhull/convhulln: now allows direct control of qhull parameters
   - csape: support n=3 case --- need to verify it is correct
   - dxfwrite: output plot to DXF format (AutoCAD)
   - fail: checks if code fails with a given error message
   - galois: load/save support
   - gpick: alternative to ginput
   - imread: now supports 16-bit grayscale
   - irsa_*: irregularly sampled data analysis functions
   - map: apply a function across all elements of a cell array
   - mex: initial support for structures
   - pngread/pngwrite: direct access to libpng
   - quadl: improved adaptive quadrature routine
   - rand/randn: faster and now supports for nD arrays
   - sort: fast sort based on python's timsort
   - sprandn: random sparse matrix filled with normally distributed  
values
   - str2double: convert string to double
   - struct: now creates structure arrays
   - toggle_grace_use: use grace plotting package rather than gnuplot
   - xmlwrite: save data to xml format

Plus the usual bug fixes and documentation updates.

Paul Kienzle
[email protected]