ANNOUNCE: GSL 0.4.1 is out

ANNOUNCE: GSL 0.4.1 is out

[Mark Galassi]

I have just placed version 0.4.1 of the GNU Scientific Library on
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/gsl/

I will also put it on ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/ as soon as I can get
through to that machine.

This minor update is motivated, in part, by trying to get a more up to 
date and reasonably stable version into the Red Hat 6.0 release, due
to hit the streets this spring.

This is important because Red Hat is still using a 0.3-based release,
and the complex number API has changed since then, so we do not want
that version to propagate.

And, of course, it's also good to have a new release every now and
then.  There is certainly a lot of new code in this release.

For more information, please see the GSL home page:
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/gsl/

----

* Will be new in gsl-0.4.1:

** Two changes not making their way into the documentation
A couple of things are not getting into the docs, so here are the
errata:
*** The FFT routines now take a stride parameter.  Passing 1 for the
stride will make them behave as documented.
*** The complex numbers are now an opaque type, and no assumptions can
be made about the format in which they are stored (they are not stored
as a simple structure anymore, since that is not portable).  The type
is now gsl_complex (or gsl_complex_long_double or gsl_complex_float),
and the macros to access them are
    GSL_REAL(z)
    GSL_IMAG(z)
    GSL_COMPLEX_P_REAL(zp)
    GSL_COMPLEX_P_IMAG(zp)
    GSL_COMPLEX_EQ(z1,z2)
    GSL_SET_COMPLEX(zp,x,y)
    GSL_SET_REAL(zp,x)
    GSL_SET_IMAG(zp,y)

This change in the complex number API makes it important that you
start working with 0.4.1 or later.

** 0.4.1 is being released in occasion of the Red Hat 6.0 release.
The specfunc module is still in an alpha state; if you run "make
check" in the specfunc directory you will see that some tests still
fail.

** Most Alpha specific problems have been fixed. In particular the
random number generators rand48 and ranf now work on the Alpha

** Additional random number distributions: Rayleigh distribution