Figure Background Color

[Kristen Richter]

Hello all,

I am attempting to adjust the figure background color from it's default white 
to red.  After reading the online Matlab manual, it seems like the appropriate 
commands are

set(gcf,'Color',[1,0,0])

After typing this command into Octave, a figure appears.  A simple plot command 
like, plot(apples,oranges) returns a default white plot with a blue line. When 
I query get(gcf,'Color'), the answer returned is 1 0 0.

I'm a little puzzled.  I never tried changing the figure background color in 
Matlab before and am not sure whether this is an Octave error (or related to 
differences between Octave and Matlab) or if I'm just not using the right 
command.

Any light that could be shed on this situation would be greatly appreciated.
And I'm running the latest version of octave, 3.2.0, compiled in Ubuntu without 
arpack (couldn't get this working).

-Kristen