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 * Fixed various "not supported" exceptions and added tests which can raise
65 "wrong document" exceptions.
66 * Introduced an Implementation class, permitting specialised node creation.
67 * Added SVG-specific document support.
68 * Made parseURI work for HTML documents.
69 * Fixed getElementsByTagName(NS), as reported by Christian Seiler.
70 * Added the textContent property to nodes.
71 * Added an experimental events module.
72
73 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
74 --------------------------------------------------------
75
76 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
77 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
78 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
79 * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
80 Wischik.
81
82 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
83 --------------------------------------------------------
84
85 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
86 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
87
88 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
89 --------------------------------------------------------
90
91 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
92 but whose names are unprefixed.
93 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
94 (hasAttributeNS).
95 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
96 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
97
98 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
99 --------------------------------------------------------
100
101 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
102 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
103
104 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
105 --------------------------------------------------------
106
107 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
108
109 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
110 ------------------------------------------------------
111
112 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
113 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
114 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
115 construction of xmlns attributes.
116
117 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
118 ------------------------------------------------------
119
120 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
121 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
122 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
123 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
124 quite probably various other things.
125 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
126 to crash).
127 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
128 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
129 details.
130
131 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
132 --------------------------------------------------------
133
134 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
135
136 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
137 --------------------------------------------------------
138
139 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
140 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
141 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
142
143 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
144 --------------------------------------------------------
145
146 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
147 current limitations around HTML parsing.
148
149 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
150 ------------------------------------------------------
151
152 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
153 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
154 * Added a normalize implementation.
155 * Added HTML parsing support.
156 * Added prettyprinting support.
157 * Fixed parseURI.
158 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
159 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
160 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
161 automatically.
162 * Improved some of the API documentation.
163 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
164 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
165 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
166 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
167 information.
168 * Added Debian package support.
169
170 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
171 ------------------------------------------------------
172
173 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
174 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
175 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
176 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
177 * Introduced document reference management.
178 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
179
180 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
181 --------------------------------------------------------
182
183 * Fixed createElement.
184 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
185
186 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
187 --------------------------------------------------------
188
189 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
190 * Added comment node creation.
191 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
192 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
193 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
194 behaviour.
195 * Added experimental XPath method support.
196
197 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
198 -----------------------
199
200 * Fixed text node creation.
201 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
202 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
203 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
204 * Added release number to the package.
205
206 Release Procedures
207 ------------------
208
209 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
210 __version__ attributes.
211 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
212 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
213 Update the release notes (see above).
214 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
215 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
216 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
217 Tag, export.
218 Archive, upload.
219 Make packages (see below).
220 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
221
222 Making Packages
223 ---------------
224
225 To make Debian-based packages:
226
227 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
228 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
229 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
230
231 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
232 ln -s packages/debian-stable/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
233
234 3. Run the package builder:
235
236 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
237
238 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
239 distribution's root directory.