While you are correct in saying that the odd roots will give a single,
non-complex answer I'm not sure how one would go about identifying the
odd roots in a reasonable, consistent fashion.

I would assume that the bracketed exponent is evaluated initially to a
decimal. For the most part you could invert the decimal and get the base
of the fraction and using that determine if the root will be even or
odd. However for irrational (currently the check is against non-integers
so these are caught) and repeating fractions this number is only
approximate, which, when used to evaluate the parity of root could
introduce errors.

I think that dealing with non-integer exponents of negative bases is
beyond the scope of gcalctool and more in line with something like
Rascal, Genius, Qalculate,  or even Octave. However, I understand that
since this is the default shipping calculator with many Gnome desktops
there may be a desire to see it's functionality increased.

-- 
Cannot do odd roots of negative numbers.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/288446
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