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+<pre>
+Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.4.3:
+-----------------------------------------------------------
+
+ ** Octave 3.4.3 is a bug fixing release.
+
+Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.4.2:
+-----------------------------------------------------------
+
+ ** Octave 3.2.4 fixes some minor installation problems that affected
+    version 3.4.1.
+
+Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.4.1:
+-----------------------------------------------------------
+
+ ** Octave 3.4.1 is primarily a bug fixing release.
+
+ ** IMPORTANT note about binary incompatibility in this release:
+
+    Binary compatibility for all 3.4.x releases was originally planned,
+    but this is impossible for the 3.4.1 release due to a bug in the way
+    shared libraries were built in Octave 3.4.0.  Because of this bug,
+    .oct files built for Octave 3.4.0 must be recompiled before they
+    will work with Octave 3.4.1.
+
+    Given that there would be binary incompatibilities with shared
+    libraries going from Octave 3.4.0 to 3.4.1, the following
+    incompatible changes were also made in this release:
+
+      * The Perl Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) library is now
+        required to build Octave.
+
+      * Octave's libraries and .oct files are now installed in
+        subdirectories of $libdir instead of $libexecdir.
+
+    Any future Octave 3.4.x release versions should remain binary
+    compatible with Octave 3.4.1 as proper library versioning is now
+    being used as recommended by the libtool manual.
+
+ ** The following functions have been deprecated in Octave 3.4.1 and will
+    be removed from Octave 3.8 (or whatever version is the second major
+    release after 3.4):
+
+      cquad  is_duplicate_entry  perror  strerror
+
+ ** The following functions are new in 3.4.1:
+
+      colstyle  gmres  iscolumn  isrow  mgorth  nproc  rectangle
+
+ ** The get_forge_pkg function is now private.
+
+ ** The rectangle_lw, rectangle_sw, triangle_lw, and triangle_sw
+    functions are now private.
+
+ ** The logistic_regression_derivatives and logistic_regression_likelihood
+    functions are now private.
+
+ ** ChangeLog files in the Octave sources are no longer maintained
+    by hand.  Instead, there is a single ChangeLog file generated from
+    the Mercurial version control commit messages.  Older ChangeLog
+    information can be found in the etc/OLD-ChangeLogs directory in the
+    source distribution.
+
+Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.4:
+---------------------------------------------------------
+
+ ** BLAS and LAPACK libraries are now required to build Octave.  The
+    subset of the reference BLAS and LAPACK libraries has been removed
+    from the Octave sources.
+
+ ** The `lookup' function was extended to be more useful for
+    general-purpose binary searching.  Using this improvement, the
+    ismember function was rewritten for significantly better
+    performance.
+
+ ** Real, integer and logical matrices, when used in indexing, will now
+    cache the internal index_vector value (zero-based indices) when
+    successfully used as indices, eliminating the conversion penalty for
+    subsequent indexing by the same matrix.  In particular, this means it
+    is no longer needed to avoid repeated indexing by logical arrays
+    using find for performance reasons.
+
+ ** Logical matrices are now treated more efficiently when used as
+    indices.  Octave will keep the index as a logical mask unless the
+    ratio of true elements is small enough, using a specialized
+    code.  Previously, all logical matrices were always first converted
+    to index vectors.  This results in savings in both memory and
+    computing time.
+
+ ** The `sub2ind' and `ind2sub' functions were reimplemented as compiled
+    functions for better performance.  These functions are now faster,
+    can deliver more economized results for ranges, and can reuse the
+    index cache mechanism described in previous paragraph.
+
+ ** The built-in function equivalents to associative operators (`plus',
+    `times', `mtimes', `and', and `or') have been extended to accept
+    multiple arguments.  This is especially useful for summing
+    (multiplying, etc.) lists of objects (of possibly distinct types):
+   
+      matrix_sum = plus (matrix_list{:});
+
+ ** An FTP object type based on libcurl has been implemented.  These
+    objects allow ftp connections, downloads and uploads to be
+    managed.  For example,
+
+      fp = ftp ("ftp.octave.org);
+      cd (fp, "gnu/octave");
+      mget (fp, "octave-3.2.3.tar.bz2");
+      close (fp);
+
+ ** The default behavior of `assert (observed, expected)' has been
+    relaxed to employ less strict checking that does not require the
+    internals of the values to match.  This avoids previously valid
+    tests from breaking due to new internal classes introduced in future
+    Octave versions.
+
+    For instance, all of these assertions were true in Octave 3.0.x
+    but false in 3.2.x due to new optimizations and improvements:
+
+      assert (2*linspace (1, 5, 5), 2*(1:5))
+      assert (zeros (0, 0), [])
+      assert (2*ones (1, 5), (2) (ones (1,5)))
+
+ ** The behavior of library functions `ismatrix', `issquare', and
+    `issymmetric' has been changed for better consistency.
+    
+    * The `ismatrix' function now returns true for all numeric,
+      logical and character 2-D or N-D matrices.  Previously, `ismatrix' 
+      returned false if the first or second dimension was zero.
+      Hence, `ismatrix ([])' was false, 
+      while `ismatrix (zeros (1,2,0))' was true.
+
+    * The `issquare' function now returns a logical scalar, and is
+      equivalent to the expression
+
+        ismatrix (x) && ndims (x) == 2 && rows (x) == columns (x)
+
+      The dimension is no longer returned.  As a result, `issquare ([])'
+      now yields true.
+    
+    * The `issymmetric' function now checks for symmetry instead of
+      Hermitianness.  For the latter, ishermitian was created.  Also,
+      logical scalar is returned rather than the dimension, so
+      `issymmetric ([])' is now true.
+      
+ ** Function handles are now aware of overloaded functions.  If a
+    function is overloaded, the handle determines at the time of its
+    reference which function to call.  A non-overloaded version does not
+    need to exist.
+
+ ** Overloading functions for built-in classes (double, int8, cell,
+    etc.) is now compatible with Matlab.
+
+ ** Function handles can now be compared with the == and != operators,
+    as well as the `isequal' function.
+
+ ** Performance of concatenation (using []) and the functions `cat',
+    `horzcat', and `vertcat' has been improved for multidimensional
+    arrays.
+
+ ** The operation-assignment operators +=, -=, *= and /= now behave more
+    efficiently in certain cases.  For instance, if M is a matrix and S a
+    scalar, then the statement
+
+      M += S;
+ 
+    will operate on M's data in-place if it is not shared by another
+    variable, usually increasing both time and memory efficiency.
+    
+    Only selected common combinations are affected, namely:
+    
+      matrix += matrix
+      matrix -= matrix
+      matrix .*= matrix
+      matrix ./= matrix
+
+      matrix += scalar
+      matrix -= scalar
+      matrix *= scalar
+      matrix /= scalar
+
+      logical matrix |= logical matrix
+      logical matrix &= logical matrix
+
+    where matrix and scalar belong to the same class.  The left-hand
+    side must be a simple variable reference.
+
+    Moreover, when unary operators occur in expressions, Octave will
+    also try to do the operation in-place if it's argument is a
+    temporary expresssion.
+
+ ** The effect of comparison operators (<, >, <=, and >=) applied to
+    complex numbers has changed to be consistent with the strict
+    ordering defined by the `max', `min', and `sort' functions.  More
+    specifically, complex numbers are compared by lexicographical
+    comparison of the pairs `[abs(z), arg(z)]'.  Previously, only real
+    parts were compared; this can be trivially achieved by wrapping the
+    operands in real().
+
+ ** The automatic simplification of complex computation results has
+    changed.  Octave will now simplify any complex number with a zero
+    imaginary part or any complex matrix with all elements having zero
+    imaginary part to a real value.  Previously, this was done only for
+    positive zeros.  Note that the behavior of the complex function is
+    unchanged and it still produces a complex value even if the
+    imaginary part is zero.
+
+ ** As a side effect of code refactoring in liboctave, the binary
+    logical operations are now more easily amenable to compiler
+    optimizations and are thus significantly faster.
+
+ ** Octave now allows user-defined `subsasgn' methods to optimize out
+    redundant copies.  For more information, see the manual.
+
+ ** More efficient matrix division handling.  Octave is now able to
+    handle the expressions
+    
+       M' \ V
+       M.' \ V
+       V / M 
+
+    (M is a matrix and V is a vector) more efficiently in certain cases.
+    In particular, if M is triangular, all three expressions will be
+    handled by a single call to xTRTRS (from LAPACK), with appropriate
+    flags.  Previously, all three expressions required a physical
+    transpose of M.
+
+ ** More efficient handling of certain mixed real-complex matrix
+    operations.  For instance, if RM is a real matrix and CM a complex
+    matrix,
+    
+      RM * CM
+
+    can now be evaluated either as
+
+      complex (RM * real (CM), RM * imag (CM))
+
+    or as
+
+      complex (RM) * CM,
+
+    depending on the dimensions.  The first form requires more
+    temporaries and copying, but halves the FLOP count, which normally
+    brings better performance if RM has enough rows.  Previously, the
+    second form was always used.
+
+    Matrix division is similarly affected.
+
+ ** More efficient handling of triangular matrix factors returned from
+    factorizations.  The functions for computing QR, LU and Cholesky
+    factorizations will now automatically return the triangular matrix
+    factors with proper internal matrix_type set, so that it won't need
+    to be computed when the matrix is used for division.
+
+ ** The built-in `sum' function now handles the non-native summation
+    (i.e., double precision sum of single or integer inputs) more
+    efficiently, avoiding a temporary conversion of the whole input
+    array to doubles.  Further, `sum' can now accept an extra option
+    argument, using a compensated summation algorithm rather than a
+    straightforward sum, which significantly improves precision if lots
+    of cancellation occurs in the summation.
+
+ ** The built-in `bsxfun' function now uses optimized code for certain
+    cases where built-in operator handles are passed in.  Namely, the
+    optimizations concern the operators `plus', `minus', `times',
+    `ldivide', `rdivide', `power', `and', `or' (for logical arrays),
+    the relational operators `eq', `ne', `lt', `le', `gt', `ge', and the
+    functions `min' and `max'.  Optimizations only apply when both
+    operands are of the same built-in class.  Mixed real/complex and
+    single/double operations will first convert both operands to a
+    common type.
+
+ ** The `strfind' and `strrep' functions now have compiled
+    implementations, facilitating significantly more efficient searching
+    and replacing in strings, especially with longer patterns.  The code
+    of `strcat' has been vectorized and is now much more efficient when
+    many strings are concatenated.  The `strcmpi' and `strncmpi'
+    functions are now built-in functions, providing better performance.
+ 
+ ** Matlab-style ignoring input and output function arguments using
+    tilde (~) is now supported.  Ignored output arguments may be
+    detected from a function using the built-in function `isargout'.
+    For more details, consult the manual. 
+
+ ** The list datatype, deprecated since the introduction of cells, has
+    been removed.
+
+ ** The accumarray function has been optimized and is now significantly
+    faster in certain important cases.
+
+ ** The behavior of isreal and isnumeric functions was changed to be more
+    Matlab-compatible.
+
+ ** The integer math & conversion warnings (Octave:int-convert-nan,
+    Octave:int-convert-non-int-val, Octave:int-convert-overflow,
+    Octave:int-math-overflow) have been removed.
+
+ ** rem and mod are now built-in functions.  They also handle integer
+    types efficiently using integer arithmetic.
+
+ ** Sparse indexing and indexed assignment has been mostly rewritten.
+    Since Octave uses compressed column storage for sparse matrices,
+    major attention is devoted to operations manipulating whole columns.
+    Such operations are now significantly faster, as well as some other
+    important cases.
+
+    Further, it is now possible to pre-allocate a sparse matrix and
+    subsequently fill it by assignments, provided they meet certain
+    conditions.  For more information, consult the `spalloc' function,
+    which is no longer a mere dummy.  Consequently, nzmax and nnz are no
+    longer always equal in Octave.  Octave may also produce a matrix
+    with nnz < nzmax as a result of other operations, so you should
+    consistently use nnz unless you really want to use nzmax (i.e. the
+    space allocated for nonzero elements).
+
+    Sparse concatenation is also affected, and concatenating sparse 
+    matrices, especially larger collections, is now significantly more 
+    efficient.  This applies to both the [] operator and the 
+    cat/vertcat/horzcat functions.
+
+ ** It is now possible to optionally employ the xGESDD LAPACK drivers
+    for computing the singular value decomposition using svd(), instead
+    of the default xGESVD, using the configuration pseudo-variable
+    svd_driver.  The xGESDD driver can be up to 6x times faster when
+    singular vectors are requested, but is reported to be somewhat less
+    robust on highly ill-conditioned matrices.
+
+ ** Configuration pseudo-variables, such as page_screen_output or 
+    confirm_recursive_rmdir (or the above mentioned svd_driver), now 
+    accept a "local" option as second argument, requesting the change 
+    to be undone when the current function returns:
+        
+    function [status, msg] = rm_rf (dir)
+      confirm_recursive_rmdir (false, "local");
+      [status, msg] = rmdir (dir, "s");
+      ...
+    endfunction
+    
+    Upon return, confirm_recursive_rmdir will be restored to the value 
+    it had on entry to the function, even if there were subsequent 
+    changes to the variable in function rm_rf or any of the functions
+    it calls.
+
+ ** pkg now accepts a -forge option for downloading and installing
+    packages from Octave Forge automatically.  For example, 
+    
+      pkg install -forge general
+    
+    will automatically download the latest release of the general
+    package and attempt to install it. No automatic resolving of
+    dependencies is provided.  Further,
+
+      pkg list -forge
+    
+    can be used to list all available packages.
+
+  ** The internal data representation of structs has been completely
+     rewritten to make certain optimizations feasible.  The field data
+     can now be shared between structs with equal keys but different
+     dimensions or values, making operations that preserve the fields
+     faster.  Economized storage is now used for scalar structs (just
+     like most other scalars), making their usage more
+     memory-efficient.  Certain array-like operations on structs
+     (concatenation, uniform cellfun, num2cell) have gained a
+     significant speed-up.  Additionally, the octave_scalar_map class
+     now provides a simpler interface to work with scalar structs within
+     a C++ DLD function.
+
+  ** Two new formats are available for displaying numbers:
+
+       format short eng
+       format long eng
+
+     Both display numbers in engineering notation, i.e., mantissa +
+     exponent where the exponent is a multiple of 3.
+
+  ** The following functions are new in Octave 3.4:
+
+       accumdim    erfcx        nfields      pqpnonneg  uigetdir 
+       bitpack     fileread     nth_element  quadcc     uigetfile  
+       bitunpack   fminbnd      onCleanup    randi      uiputfile    
+       blkmm       fskipl       pbaspect     repelems   uimenu  
+       cbrt        ifelse       pie3         reset      whitebg
+       curl        ishermitian  powerset     rsf2csf    
+       chop        isindex      ppder        saveas          
+       daspect     luupdate     ppint        strread          
+       divergence  merge        ppjumps      textread 
+
+  ** Using the image function to view images with external programs such
+     as display, xv, and xloadimage is no longer supported.  The
+     image_viewer function has also been removed.
+
+  ** The behavior of struct assignments to non-struct values has been
+     changed.  Previously, it was possible to overwrite an arbitrary
+     value:
+      
+        a = 1;
+        a.x = 2;
+
+     This is no longer possible unless a is an empty matrix or cell
+     array.
+  
+  ** The dlmread function has been extended to allow specifying a custom
+     value for empty fields.
+
+  ** The dlmread and dlmwrite functions have been modified to accept
+     file IDs (as returned by fopen) in addition to file names.
+
+  ** Octave can now optimize away the interpreter overhead of an
+     anonymous function handle, if the function simply calls another
+     function or handle with some of its parameters bound to certain
+     values.  Example:
+     
+       f = @(x) sum (x, 1);
+
+     When f is called, the call is forwarded to @sum with the constant 1
+     appended, and the anonymous function call does not occur on the
+     call stack.
+
+ ** Deprecated functions.
+
+    The following functions were deprecated in Octave 3.0 and have been
+    removed from Octave 3.4.
+                                           
+      beta_cdf         geometric_pdf        pascal_pdf      
+      beta_inv         geometric_rnd        pascal_rnd      
+      beta_pdf         hypergeometric_cdf   poisson_cdf     
+      beta_rnd         hypergeometric_inv   poisson_inv     
+      binomial_cdf     hypergeometric_pdf   poisson_pdf     
+      binomial_inv     hypergeometric_rnd   poisson_rnd     
+      binomial_pdf     intersection         polyinteg       
+      binomial_rnd     is_bool              setstr          
+      chisquare_cdf    is_complex           struct_contains 
+      chisquare_inv    is_list              struct_elements 
+      chisquare_pdf    is_matrix            t_cdf           
+      chisquare_rnd    is_scalar            t_inv           
+      clearplot        is_square            t_pdf           
+      clg              is_stream            t_rnd           
+      com2str          is_struct            uniform_cdf     
+      exponential_cdf  is_symmetric         uniform_inv     
+      exponential_inv  is_vector            uniform_pdf     
+      exponential_pdf  isstr                uniform_rnd     
+      exponential_rnd  lognormal_cdf        weibcdf         
+      f_cdf            lognormal_inv        weibinv         
+      f_inv            lognormal_pdf        weibpdf         
+      f_pdf            lognormal_rnd        weibrnd         
+      f_rnd            meshdom              weibull_cdf     
+      gamma_cdf        normal_cdf           weibull_inv     
+      gamma_inv        normal_inv           weibull_pdf     
+      gamma_pdf        normal_pdf           weibull_rnd     
+      gamma_rnd        normal_rnd           wiener_rnd      
+      geometric_cdf    pascal_cdf
+      geometric_inv    pascal_inv
+
+    The following functions were deprecated in Octave 3.2 and will
+    be removed from Octave 3.6 (or whatever version is the second major
+    release after 3.2):
+
+      create_set          spcholinv    splu   
+      dmult               spcumprod    spmax
+      iscommand           spcumsum     spmin
+      israwcommand        spdet        spprod
+      lchol               spdiag       spqr
+      loadimage           spfind       spsum
+      mark_as_command     sphcat       spsumsq
+      mark_as_rawcommand  spinv        spvcat 
+      spatan2             spkron       str2mat
+      spchol              splchol      unmark_command
+      spchol2inv          split        unmark_rawcommand
+
+    The following functions have been deprecated in Octave 3.4 and will
+    be removed from Octave 3.8 (or whatever version is the second major
+    release after 3.4):
+
+      autocor  cellidx   gammai     krylovb    values
+      autocov  dispatch  glpkmex    replot
+      betai    fstat     is_global  saveimage
+
+  * For compatibility with Matlab, mu2lin (x) is now equivalent to
+    mu2lin (x, 0).
+
+  * The ARPACK library is now distributed with Octave so it no longer
+    needs to be available as an external dependency when building
+    Octave.
+</pre>