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+---
+
+<pre>
+
+
+Summary of important user-visible changes for version 4.2:
+---------------------------------------------------------
+
+ ** The parser has been extended to accept, but ignore, underscore
+    characters in numbers.  This facilitates writing more legible code
+    by using '_' as a thousands separator or to group nibbles into bytes
+    in hex constants.
+
+    Examples: 1_000_000 == 1e6  or  0xDE_AD_BE_EF
+
+ ** The parser has been extended to understand binary numbers which
+    begin with the prefix '0b' or '0B'.  The value returned is Octave's
+    default numeric class of double, not at unsigned integer class.
+    Therefore numbers greater than flintmax, i.e., 2^53, will lose some
+    precision.
+
+    Examples: 0b101 == 5  or  0B1100_0001 == 0xC1
+
+ ** gnuplot 4.4 is now the minimum version supported by Octave.
+
+ ** The default set of colors used to plot lines has been updated to be
+    compatible with Matlab's new default color scheme.  The line plot
+    color scheme can be set with the axes property "ColorOrder".
+
+ ** The default colormap is now set to "viridis" which is also the
+    default colormap in matplotlib.  This new colormap fixes some of the
+    main issues with the old default colormap "jet" such as its bad
+    "luminance profile" and is also more similar to Matlab's new default
+    colormap "parula".
+
+ ** The colormap function no longer supports the input argument "list"
+    to show built-in colormaps.  Use "help colormap" to find the
+    built-in colormaps.
+
+ ** The graphics command "hold on" now ensures that each new plot added
+    to an existing plot has a different color or linestyle according to
+    the "ColorOrder" and/or "LineStyleOrder" properties.  This is
+    equivalent to the old command "hold all" and was made for Matlab
+    compatibility.  Existing code *may* produce differently colored
+    plots if it did not specify the color for a plot and relied on each
+    new plot having the default first color in the "ColorOrder"
+    property.
+
+ ** When starting, Octave now looks in the function path for a file
+    startup.m and executes any commands found there.  This change was
+    made to accommodate Matlab users.  Octave has it's own configuration
+    system based on the file .octaverc which is preferred.
+
+ ** Octal ('\NNN') and hex ('\xNN') escape sequences in single quoted
+    strings are now interpreted by the function do_string_escapes().
+    The *printf family of functions now supports octal and hex escape
+    sequences in single-quoted strings for Matlab compatibility.
+
+ ** Special octal and hex escape sequences for the pattern and
+    replacement strings in regular expressions are now interpreted for
+    Matlab compatibility.
+
+    octal: '\oNNN' or '\o{NNN}'
+    hex  : '\xNN'  or '\x{NN}'
+
+ ** Unknown escape sequences in the replacement string for regexprep are
+    now substituted with their unescaped version and no warning is
+    emitted.  This change was made for Matlab compatibility.
+
+    Example: regexprep ('a', 'a', 'x\yz')
+             => 'xyz'
+
+ ** mkfifo now interprets the MODE argument as an octal, not decimal,
+    integer.  This is consistent with the equivalent shell command.
+
+ ** linspace now returns an empty matrix if the number of requested
+    points is 0 or a negative number.  This change was made to be
+    compatible with Matlab releases newer than 2011.  In addition,
+    Octave no longer supports matrix inputs for A or B.
+
+ ** The cov function now returns the complex conjugate of the result
+    from previous versions of Octave.  This change was made for
+    compatibility with Matlab.
+
+ ** condest now works with a normest1 compatible syntax.
+
+ ** The griddata function no longer plots the interpolated mesh if no
+    output argument is requested, instead the vector or array of
+    interpolated values is always returned for Matlab compatibility.
+
+ ** The new function "light" and the corresponding graphics object
+    provide light and shadow effects for patch and surface objects.
+
+ ** The surfnorm function now returns unnormalized (magnitude != 1)
+    normal vectors for compatibility with Matlab.
+
+ ** The normal vectors returned from isonormals have been reversed to
+    point towards smaller values for compatibility with Matlab.
+
+ ** The quadl function now uses an absolute, rather than relative,
+    tolerance for Matlab compatibility.  The default tolerance is 1e-6
+    which may result in lower precision results than previous versions
+    of Octave which used eps as the relative tolerance.  The quadl
+    function has also been extended to return a second output with the
+    total number of function evaluations.
+
+ ** The textscan function is now built-in and is much faster and much
+    more Matlab-compatible than the previous m-file version.
+
+ ** Dialog boxes--errordlg, helpdlg, inputdlg, listdlg, msgbox,
+    questdlg, and warndlg--now exclusively use Qt for rendering.
+    Java based versions have been removed.
+
+ ** The axes properties "TitleFontSizeMultiplier" and "TitleFontWeight"
+    are now implemented which control the default appearance of text
+    created with title().
+    The axes property "LabelFontSizeMultiplier" is now implemented
+    which controls the default appearance of text created with
+    xlabel(), ylabel(), or zlabel().
+
+ ** The graphics property "box" for axes now defaults to "off".
+    To obtain equivalent plots to previous versions of Octave use
+      set (0, "DefaultAxesBox", "on");
+    in your .octaverc file.
+
+ ** The graphics property "boxstyle" has been implemented.  The default
+    is "back" which draws only the back planes in a 3-D view.  If the
+    option is "full" then all planes are drawn.
+
+ ** The graphics property "erasemode" has been hidden, and will
+    eventually be removed.  This property has also been removed
+    from Matlab, and was never implemented in Octave.
+
+ ** The graphics property "graphicssmoothing" for figures now controls
+    whether anti-aliasing will be used for lines.  The default is "on".
+
+ ** The value "zero" for the axes properties "xaxislocation" and
+    "yaxislocation" has been deprecated and will be removed from
+    Octave 4.6.  Use "origin" instead.
+
+ ** The publish function allows easy publication of Octave script files
+    in HTML or other formats, including figures and output created by
+    this script.  It comes with its counterpart grabcode, which lets one
+    literally grab the HTML published code from a remote website, for
+    example.
+
+ ** The value of the MEX variable TrapFlag now defaults to 0, which will
+    cause Octave to abort execution of a MEX file and return to the
+    prompt if an error is encountered in mexCallMATLAB.
+
+ ** The MEX API now includes the function mexCallMATLABWithTrap.  This
+    function will not abort if an error occurs during mexCallMATLAB, but
+    instead will return execution to the MEX function for error
+    handling.
+
+ ** The MEX API functions for input validation that begin with "mxIs"
+    (e.g., mxIsDouble, mxIsEmpty, etc.) now return type bool rather than
+    type int.
+
+ ** The functions mxAssert and mxAssertS for checking assertions have
+    been added.  In order to avoid a performance penalty they are only
+    compiled in to debug versions of a MEX file, i.e., that are produced
+    when the '-g' option is given to mex or mkoctfile.
+
+ ** Other new MEX API functions include mexEvalStringWithTrap,
+    mxIsScalar, mxCreateUninitNumericArray, mxCreateUninitNumericMatrix.
+
+ ** Other new functions added in 4.2:
+
+      audioformats
+      camlight
+      condeig
+      deg2rad
+      dialog
+      evalc
+      hash
+      im2double
+      isocaps
+      lighting
+      localfunctions
+      material
+      normest1
+      ode23
+      ode45
+      odeget
+      odeplot
+      odeset
+      padecoef
+      profexport
+      psi
+      rad2deg
+      reducepatch
+      reducevolume
+      smooth3
+      uibuttongroup
+
+ ** Deprecated functions.
+
+    The following functions have been deprecated in Octave 4.2 and will
+    be removed from Octave 4.6 (or whatever version is the second major
+    release after 4.2):
+
+      Function             | Replacement
+      ---------------------|------------------
+      bitmax               | flintmax
+      mahalanobis          | mahal in Octave-Forge statistics pkg
+      md5sum               | hash
+      octve_config_info    | __octave_config_info__
+      onenormest           | normest1
+      sleep                | pause
+      usleep               | pause
+      wavread              | audioread
+      wavwrite             | audiowrite
+
+ ** The following functions were deprecated in Octave 3.8 and have been
+    removed from Octave 4.2.
+
+      default_save_options    java_new
+      gen_doc_cache           java_unsigned_conversion
+      interp1q                javafields
+      isequalwithequalnans    javamethods
+      java_convert_matrix     re_read_readline_init_file
+      java_debug              read_readline_init_file
+      java_invoke             saving_history
+
+ ** The global error_state variable in Octave's C++ API has been
+    deprecated and will be removed in a future version.  Now the error
+    and print_usage functions throw an exception
+    (octave::execution_exception) after displaying the error message.
+    This makes the error and print_usage functions in C++ work more like
+    the corresponding functions in the scripting language.
+
+ ** The default error handlers in liboctave have been updated to use
+    exceptions.  After displaying an error message they no longer return
+    control to the calling program.  The error handler function can be
+    customized through the global variables
+    "current_liboctave_error_handler" and
+    "current_liboctave_error_with_id_handler".  If a programmer has
+    installed their own custom error handling routines when directly
+    linking with liboctave then these must be updated to throw an
+    exception and not return to the calling program.
+
+ ** The system for common errors and warnings has been renamed from
+    gripe_XXX to either err_XXX if error is called or warn_XXX if
+    warning is called.  The gripe_XXX functions are deprecated and will
+    be removed in version 4.6.
+
+ ** New configure option, --enable-address-sanitizer-flags, to build
+    Octave with memory allocator checks (similar to those in valgrind)
+    built in.
+</pre>