installation of latest version of octave & packages

[Eric Hulburd]

Hi,

I'm a new user to Octave.  I originally downloaded the 'octave-3.4.0.tar.gz' file from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/.  I didn't know what to do with a .tar.gz file so I then downloaded it from here: http://octave.sourceforge.net/.  This is version 3.2.4 and I was hoping to install the io package from http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.php, so I first have to get version 3.4.0.  

I tried pasting the octave-3.4.0.tar.gz file to my current directory and then commanding 'pkg install octave-3.4.0.tar.gz' but after a while it just returned a bunch of errors that I don't really understand.

Am I following the right procedures?  How do I install the latest version of Octave using the tar.gz file and then install the io package?

Thanks much,

Eric