Tested against octave-2.1.72.  Many functions will also work on 
earlier versions of Octave.  Said to work on 2.9.4.  The usual 
build instructions apply: 

  ./configure; make; make check; make install
  
Note that some tests will fail because of known bugs or missing
features.  This should be indicated in the tests themselves.  Many
tests will fail on older versions of Octave.

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.

2006-03-16 ===========================================================

* statistics/regress: new function
* general bug fixes and improvements (see ChangeLog for details)

2006-01-28 ===========================================================

* audio/waveread: big-endian fix; 2-channel file fix
* comm/galois: fix rank calculation for galois array
* general/interp2: cubic interpolation
* image/: return MxNx3 matrices of appropriate numeric class
* io/textread: faster
* io/dlmwrite: control precision and line separator; allow append
* miscellaneous/mfilename: compatibility function
* miscellaneous/listen: subnet patterns; loopback support
* NaN/xcovf: missing data xcorr
* octcdf/: support for netcdf files
* optim/wpolyfit: return row vector; allow centering and scaling
* plot/legend: fix error on first call
* plot/print: add PDF option
* signal/residued,residuez: partial fraction expansion of filters
* signal/qp_kaiser: PPN filter bank coefficients
* statistics/histfit: allow negative data
* statistics/mvnpdf,mvnrnd: multivariate normal distribution
* tsa/: improved speed, style and docs
* tsa/amarma: adaptive mean ARMA modeling
* tsa/y2res: add entropy estimation; add equidistant quantisation
* tsa/mvfreqz: add PDCF
* support for 2.9.4
* support for 64-bit indexing
* support for MinGW build
* general bug fixes and improvements (see ChangeLog for details)

2005-06-13 ===========================================================

* textread now returns cell arrays
* use new gnuplot interface for functions
* fix rand bug on non-intel architectures
* more econometrics functions
* new functions: randg, cellfun, cell2mat, bwarea, imresize, savepath
* bug fixes and improvements (see ChangeLog for details)

2004-11-16 ===========================================================

Extends support to Octave 2.1.62

* initial econometrics toolbox
* updated protein databank (extra/pdb) functions
* new functions: wavread wavwrite hann strfind randp sprandn conv2nan
* many bug fixes and improvements

2004-09-07 ===========================================================

Extends support to Octave 2.1.58

* Base
  - getfield/setfield now have a compatible interface; for the
    old behaviour, use setfields/getfields.
  - Fill full 53-bit mantissa with the random number generators; new 
    sequences will be different from old sequences with the same seed.
  - Removed restrictions on datenum/datevec and added calendar/eomday
  - Added nthroot to return real root if available
  - Added isa to test for class membership
  - clf resets to line graphs
  - Quiver plot is faster and no longer requires clf
  - Added audio playback on OS X

* Image processing
  - Initial support for int* types.
  - Added dilate erode bweuler bwmorph houghtf stretchlim
    makelut applylut uintlut padarray roicolor poly2mask
    qtdecomp qtgetblk qtsetblk bestblk blkproc nlfilter
    cmunique cmpermute col2im im2col graycomatrix conndef isrgb

* Optimization
  - Replacement fzero using Brent's root finder

* Communications:
  - Support for concatenation operator [] on galois type
  - Reduce restrictions on bchpoly syndtable

* Signal processing:
  - Added flattopwin
  - fir1/fir2 have more flexible argument handling 

* Sparse:
  - Load/save support
  - Support for concatenation operator []
  - Added pcr for preconditioned conjugate gradient

* Statistics:
  - Added histfit pareto tabulate anderson_darling_cdf anderson_darling_test


2004-07-07 ===========================================================

Extends support to Octave 2.1.57.

* The optimization functions have been replaced but the new interface 
  is not yet settled.  See the files in the optim directory.

* New package gsl: GNU Scientific library bindings.

* New package fixed: Fixed point numeric operations.

* New functions: polyconf wsolve fullfact pcg princomp filtic
  rande azimuth deg2rad rad2deg distance zoom inputname fnval
  fftconv2 mvaar

* Bug fixes everywhere they are found.

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.

2003-06-02 for Octave 2.1.36 and up ==========================================

* Extended support backward to octave 2.1.36 and forward to octave 2.1.49
  for all oct-files.  Some scripts make use of features only available in
  more recent versions of Octave.

* Communications: 
  - sqrt over Galois field
  - BCH code, modulator
  - bug fixes and documentation improvements

* Image:
  - added rotate_scale() 

* Optimization:
  - added Nick Higham's adsmax, mdsmax nmsmax for fmins
  - lp() fix range error

* Plotting:
  - surf()/surfc() support gnuplot 3.8i shaded surfaces
  - added peaks()
  - legend() inside/ouside/boxon/boxoff/right/left

* Signal Processing 
  - added freqs, invfreqs, invfreqz
  - return statespace and laplacian IIR filters (butter, cheby1, cheby2, ellip)
  - fixed aryule() to return the correct filter

* Statistics: 
  - added normplot()
  - scatter() optimization

* Sparse:
  - added concatenation functions spvcat() and sphcat()

* Symbolic: 
  - added poly2sym, sym2poly, numden, findsymbols, findsym, symlsolve, 
    symfsolve, syminfo
  - subs() accepts cell arrays

* TSA/NaN:
  - many bug fixes and documentation improvements

* Miscellaneous:
  - added cellstr()
  - fieldnames() now returns cell array
  - listen() bugfixes
  - ellipke() supports m < 0
  - deal() now supports [a,b] = deal(b,a)
  - dlmread() converted to C++ for speed and more flexible input

* administration: 
  - target specific build instructions (MacOSX, windows, Irix)

2003-02-22 for Octave 2.1.45 =================================================

* Updates for octave 2.1.45

* Parallel: Light weight parallel programming added but flagged NOINSTALL.

* Communications: add galois field functions and others

* Signal Processing: add convmtx and dftmtx

* Geometry: add (poor) griddata/tsearch support --- please improve!!

* VRML: new options 'z(grey|rb|col)' for vmesh() and
  vrml_surf(). Fixes and improvements to many functions.

* NaN: enhanced cov/covm, NaN arithmetic fixes 

* TSA: bug fix (matlab 5.3 bug)

* Sparse: add spstats and x.^a, more robust

* Base functions: add fileparts, filesep, char, dos; improve dlmread

* Function overloading: dispatch() lets you call tf rather than f if the
  first argument to f is t.

* Octave server: listen() sets up a socket to receive octave commands from
  a particular host --- please improve!!

Many fixes, compatibility improvements and better Windows support.

Thanks, all!

	
2002-11-30 for Octave 2.1.40 =================================================

New functions

	* general/ndims: compatibility function
        * image/imginfo: determines size of image using 'convert'
	* image/colfilt: image block filtering function
	* image/im{rotate,translate,shear}: image transformations
	* miscellaneous/inline: generate a function from an expression
        * miscellaneous/slurp_file: loads a file into a string
        * miscellaneous/{rotv,rotparams}: parameterize 3D rotation matrices
	* plot/contour.f: filled contours
	* sparse/{sprand,spdiags,issparse}: sparse functions
	* specfun/lambertw: Lambert's W function: x=w(x)*exp(w(x))
	* specfun/betaln: log beta
	* splines/pchip: Piecewise Cubic Hermitian Interpolating Polynomial
	* statistics/{boxplot,scatter}: statistical plots
	* symbolic/{cheb,chebwin}: Dolph-Chebyshev windows
        * vrml/vmesh: 3D visualization of a surface
        * vrml/*: represent and show 3D objects as VRML code (needs FreeWRL)

Extended interfaces

	* audio/au{load,save}: support floating point .wav formats
	* image/colorgradient: allow instantaneous transitions (weight 0)
	* optim/wpolyfit: option to fit through origin
	* signal/{ellip,ellipord}: compatible interfac
	* sparse/spy: accept dense matrices
	* strings/mat2string: accept [] and complex
	* symbolic/*: relational operators
	* time/datestr: more format codes; handle vectors of dates

Changed interfaces

	* image/bwlabel: C++ version---may be different from m-file interface
	* extra/ode: moved from v1.06 to v1.14
	* optim/*: unified interface supporting options
	* optim/wpolyfit: don't return yf
	* optim/wpolyfit: return row vectors for compatibility with polyfit
	* signal/nellip: replaced by ellip, ellipord
	* OCTAVE_FORGE_VERSION is now an ordered integer: yyyymmdd
	* FIXES/fsolve: removed because it hasn't been updated to 2.1.40


extra/tsa

	* significance test and confidence intervals for PACF
	* added histogram functions for multicolumn data
	* support for new releases of octave and matlab
	* bug fixes

extra/NaN

	* added TRIMEAN, NORMPDF, NORMCDF and NORMRND
	* extended NANTEST
	* significance test and confidence intervals for CORRCOEF
	* faster RANKS
	* support for new releases of octave and matlab

Internal changes

	* extra/symband: eigenvector bug removed
	* io/dlmread: returned matrix was transposed
	* general/rat: display 1/0 for infinity
	* plot/ginput: m-file version based on grab.cc
	* plot/legend: give gnuplot time to respond to parameter request
	* signal/{buttord,fir1}: bug fixes
	* sparse/spy: prettier graph
	* gcc 3.2 updates
	* octave 2.1.40 updates
	* remove functions and fixes that are now in octave

Administration

        * vrml/doc: LaTeX tutorial on 3D visualization tools 
	* Octave for Windows FAQ updates
	* INSTALL.WINDOWS installation notes
	* support for static build under Windows

2002-05-09 for Octave 2.1.31 =================================================

This is a bug fix release.  Many thanks to the good folks at Debian for
finding the portability problems.

New functions

	* miscellaneous/OCTAVE_FORGE_VERSION
	* extra/tsa/durlev
	* strings/base64encode
	* signal/guasswin
	* image/colfilt

Changes

	* audio/sound: uses ssh rather than rsh for remote audio
	* testfun/assert: use tol>0 for relative error, tol<0 for absolute err
	* optim/bfgs: new interface
	* optim/minimize: ndiff, jac, hess and ihess options
	* NaN/sumskipnan: additional outputs
	* NaN/*: bug fixes

Bug fixes

	* signal/triang: for n=2, peak=1 at the virtual center of the window
	* signal/gaussian: now returns a symmetric window
	* now compiles on most Debian systems which support Octave.
	* updated doc strings, tests

Administration

	* make check and make icheck added.  Only supports the compiled
	  functions at the moment, but it is a start.

