printing a non-visible figure... earlier solutions not working?

[Nicholas Jankowski]

scripting generation of some plot graphics. came across an old mailing
list discussion that gave the following as an example script to do
this:

http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Saving-pngs-without-plotting-to-screen-first-tp1628966p1628970.html

octave:1> figure(1, "visible", "off");
octave:2> plot(sin(1:100));
octave:3> print -dpng "/tmp/sin.png"

however, when I follow this exact script, It doesn't generate the
sin.png file until I execute a figure(1, "visible", "on"), at which
point it immediately generates the file after redrawing the figure.

Am I missing something here? Running v3.6.1_gcc4.6.2 (Windows MINGW binary.)