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