libxml2dom

README.txt

254:159613a080eb
2008-06-20 Paul Boddie Added tag rel-0-4-1 for changeset 274a1618ae9e
     1 Introduction
     2 ------------
     3 
     4 See docs/index.html for the libxml2dom documentation.
     5 
     6 Compatibility Warnings
     7 ----------------------
     8 
     9 From libxml2dom 0.4, nodeValue now returns different results in some cases.
    10 Previously, it was possible to get the textual contents of an element using
    11 the nodeValue property, although this is incompatible with the DOM
    12 specifications. Instead, you should now use the textContent property to get
    13 such data.
    14 
    15 Contact, Copyright and Licence Information
    16 ------------------------------------------
    17 
    18 The current Web page for libxml2dom at the time of release is:
    19 
    20 http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/libxml2dom.html
    21 
    22 Copyright and licence information can be found in the docs directory - see
    23 docs/COPYING.txt and docs/LICENCE.txt for more information.
    24 
    25 Dependencies
    26 ------------
    27 
    28 libxml2     Tested with libxml2 2.6.17.
    29             Use --with-python=<path to python executable> if building from
    30             source. Previous releases of libxml2 in the 2.6 series may work,
    31             but releases before 2.6.16 are not recommended.
    32 
    33             For Windows users, see also the packages for libxml2, available
    34             from the following site:
    35 
    36             http://users.skynet.be/sbi/libxml-python/
    37 
    38 Python      Tested with Python 2.4.
    39             Python releases from 2.2 onwards should be compatible with
    40             libxml2dom. The principal requirement from such releases is the
    41             new-style class support which permits the use of properties in
    42             the libxml2dom implementation.
    43 
    44 Testing
    45 -------
    46 
    47 Some of the tests require libxml2macro.py to be run on the test source code
    48 first. Read the docstrings for the various test files before attempting to run
    49 any of them. See also docs/NOTES_libxml2macro.txt for more information. Note
    50 that such tests are retained for historical purposes and/or curiosity since
    51 libxml2macro.py is no longer supported.
    52 
    53 Issues
    54 ------
    55 
    56 The presence of xmlns attributes in serialised documents was called into
    57 question, and the tests/namespace*.py files attempt to show the current
    58 behaviour of libxml2dom.
    59 
    60 Use of importNode seems to cause some kind of memory issue, probably related
    61 to nodes being shared across documents. This was observed in libxml2 2.6.0 but
    62 appears to be fixed in libxml2 2.6.16.
    63 
    64 Even compared to minidom, importNode may seem very slow (even the
    65 libxml2dom.macrolib implementation, too). A way is needed to get libxml2 to do
    66 the node copying itself.
    67 
    68 New in libxml2dom 0.4.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4)
    69 ------------------------------------------------------
    70 
    71   * Fixed the absence of CDATA node creation and importing.
    72 
    73 New in libxml2dom 0.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.6)
    74 ------------------------------------------------------
    75 
    76   * Changed the nodeValue property to return None for various node types, as
    77     specified in the DOM specification (Level 3).
    78   * Fixed various "not supported" exceptions and added tests which can raise
    79     "wrong document" exceptions.
    80   * Introduced an Implementation class, permitting specialised node creation.
    81   * Added SVG-specific document support.
    82   * Made parseURI work for HTML documents.
    83   * Fixed getElementsByTagName(NS), as reported by Christian Seiler.
    84   * Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling and parentNode crashes using
    85     suggestions from Christian Seiler.
    86   * Reintroduced node comparisons using suggestions from Christian Seiler.
    87   * Fixed the absence of the CDATA node type.
    88   * Added the textContent property to nodes.
    89   * Added a getDOMImplementation function.
    90   * Added an experimental events module.
    91   * Added an htmlencoding parameter to the parse functions, as requested by
    92     Iliyan Peychev.
    93 
    94 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
    95 --------------------------------------------------------
    96 
    97   * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
    98     DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
    99   * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
   100   * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
   101     Wischik.
   102 
   103 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
   104 --------------------------------------------------------
   105 
   106   * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
   107   * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
   108 
   109 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
   110 --------------------------------------------------------
   111 
   112   * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
   113     but whose names are unprefixed.
   114   * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
   115     (hasAttributeNS).
   116   * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
   117     NodeList, adding a length attribute.
   118 
   119 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
   120 --------------------------------------------------------
   121 
   122   * Removed redundant weakref usage.
   123   * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
   124 
   125 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
   126 --------------------------------------------------------
   127 
   128   * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
   129 
   130 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
   131 ------------------------------------------------------
   132 
   133   * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
   134     set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
   135   * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
   136     construction of xmlns attributes.
   137 
   138 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
   139 ------------------------------------------------------
   140 
   141   * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
   142     Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
   143     ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
   144     objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
   145     quite probably various other things.
   146   * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
   147     to crash).
   148   * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
   149   * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
   150     details.
   151 
   152 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
   153 --------------------------------------------------------
   154 
   155   * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
   156 
   157 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
   158 --------------------------------------------------------
   159 
   160   * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
   161   * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
   162   * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
   163 
   164 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
   165 --------------------------------------------------------
   166 
   167   * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
   168     current limitations around HTML parsing.
   169 
   170 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
   171 ------------------------------------------------------
   172 
   173   * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
   174   * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
   175   * Added a normalize implementation.
   176   * Added HTML parsing support.
   177   * Added prettyprinting support.
   178   * Fixed parseURI.
   179   * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
   180     like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
   181     convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
   182     automatically.
   183   * Improved some of the API documentation.
   184   * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
   185     potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
   186   * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
   187     expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
   188     information.
   189   * Added Debian package support.
   190 
   191 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
   192 ------------------------------------------------------
   193 
   194   * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
   195     dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
   196     and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
   197   * Improved attribute and document node handling.
   198   * Introduced document reference management.
   199   * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
   200 
   201 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
   202 --------------------------------------------------------
   203 
   204   * Fixed createElement.
   205   * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
   206 
   207 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
   208 --------------------------------------------------------
   209 
   210   * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
   211   * Added comment node creation.
   212   * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
   213   * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
   214   * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
   215     behaviour.
   216   * Added experimental XPath method support.
   217 
   218 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
   219 -----------------------
   220 
   221   * Fixed text node creation.
   222   * Fixed setAttributeNS.
   223   * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
   224   * Added the missing previousSibling property.
   225   * Added release number to the package.
   226 
   227 Release Procedures
   228 ------------------
   229 
   230 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
   231 __version__ attributes.
   232 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
   233 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
   234 Update the release notes (see above).
   235 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
   236 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
   237 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
   238 Tag, export.
   239 Archive, upload.
   240 Make packages (see below).
   241 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
   242 
   243 Making Packages
   244 ---------------
   245 
   246 To make Debian-based packages:
   247 
   248   1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
   249   2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
   250      Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
   251 
   252      ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
   253      ln -s packages/debian-stable/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
   254 
   255   3. Run the package builder:
   256 
   257      dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
   258 
   259   4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
   260      distribution's root directory.