[Gnuplot-info] Check out gnuplot 4.0 release candidate #1

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

I'm proud to announce the availability of the first release candidate
for the upcoming new gnuplot version 4.0 --- the first major version
number increase in over a decade.  The actual release date is not
quite fixed yet, but we're aiming at somewhere around beginning of
April, maybe earlier.  Here's the URL (sorry for the long line...)

  http://sf.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2055&package_id=66525

Always pick the most current version you see on that page (currently
3.8k patchlevel 1, a.k.a. "3.8k.1").

We would like to encourage everybody with a vested interest in gnuplot
to get this new version and give it a test ride.  In other words,
we're calling for a beta-test by the broader public.  And that means:
you.

You may have seen various 3.8 versions of gnuplot mentioned in its
newsgroup and elsewhere.  That version has been developed over the
course of several years, in parallel to the previous public release
3.7.  It contains a ton of new features, several new terminal drivers,
quite some changes to the command script syntax, and some large-scale
changes to the internal code structure to make it more maintainable.
For a list of new features, see the NEWS file that comes with the
program.

The 3.8 branch has been used mostly by ourselves and some others on a
regular basis for quite a while now.  As far as we know, there are no
show-stopping bugs in it right now, but that may be because we didn't
look in the right places.

That's where all you out there come in.  In order to assure that the
upcoming release is of as a high quality as we can manage, it's
important that as many of you as possible test this new version in
your own ways, and check that it doesn't break spectacularly.  If
there's a bug in it that makes this version unusable, we'ld like to
here about it _now_, rather than 3 hours after we released version 4.0
to the general public.

So, if you would like to get an early look at what 4.0 will be, point
your browser at the URL above and give it a try.  So far, we only have
a source tarball available there.  Binary packages for selected
platforms will be added as they become available.  Linux users should
have no problem compiling it themselves...

Thanks in advance, and have fun with the future.


-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.