diagonal matrices specializations

[John W. Eaton]

On 11-Dec-2008, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

| OK, that's right, it will fail. However, the converting is not that
| easy, because what the HDF5 saving code does is that it asks an
| octave_value "what type are you of?", then stores the type name, and
| then calls the value "now save yourself".
| Instead, the sequence needs to be changed to:
| "are you hdf-5 saveable?"
| if yes, then "what type are you of?", write type, "save yourself".
| if not, then "convert yourself" (numeric_conversion), and repeat.

What is preventing us from simply saving the new data types?  Isn't it
just the type name (as usual) plus dimensions (usual) and then the
array that makes up the diagonal (or permutation) matrix?  Why not
just write that code so that saving and loading these data types at
least works, and then users of 3.2 (and snapshots leading up to it)
won't see any surprising regressions from 3.0?

jwe