libxml2dom

README.txt

240:ad3e17df1e84
2007-03-13 paulb [project @ 2007-03-13 19:33:06 by paulb] Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling, parentNode using a test for the result of the underlying function providing the libxml2 result for such operations. Reintroduced node comparisons. Added a getDOMImplementation function.
     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   * Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling and parentNode crashes using
    71     suggestions from Christian Seiler.
    72   * Reintroduced node comparisons using suggestions from Christian Seiler.
    73   * Added the textContent property to nodes.
    74   * Added a getDOMImplementation function.
    75   * Added an experimental events module.
    76 
    77 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
    78 --------------------------------------------------------
    79 
    80   * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
    81     DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
    82   * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
    83   * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
    84     Wischik.
    85 
    86 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
    87 --------------------------------------------------------
    88 
    89   * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
    90   * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
    91 
    92 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
    93 --------------------------------------------------------
    94 
    95   * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
    96     but whose names are unprefixed.
    97   * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
    98     (hasAttributeNS).
    99   * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
   100     NodeList, adding a length attribute.
   101 
   102 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
   103 --------------------------------------------------------
   104 
   105   * Removed redundant weakref usage.
   106   * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
   107 
   108 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
   109 --------------------------------------------------------
   110 
   111   * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
   112 
   113 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
   114 ------------------------------------------------------
   115 
   116   * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
   117     set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
   118   * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
   119     construction of xmlns attributes.
   120 
   121 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
   122 ------------------------------------------------------
   123 
   124   * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
   125     Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
   126     ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
   127     objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
   128     quite probably various other things.
   129   * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
   130     to crash).
   131   * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
   132   * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
   133     details.
   134 
   135 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
   136 --------------------------------------------------------
   137 
   138   * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
   139 
   140 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
   141 --------------------------------------------------------
   142 
   143   * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
   144   * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
   145   * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
   146 
   147 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
   148 --------------------------------------------------------
   149 
   150   * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
   151     current limitations around HTML parsing.
   152 
   153 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
   154 ------------------------------------------------------
   155 
   156   * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
   157   * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
   158   * Added a normalize implementation.
   159   * Added HTML parsing support.
   160   * Added prettyprinting support.
   161   * Fixed parseURI.
   162   * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
   163     like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
   164     convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
   165     automatically.
   166   * Improved some of the API documentation.
   167   * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
   168     potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
   169   * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
   170     expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
   171     information.
   172   * Added Debian package support.
   173 
   174 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
   175 ------------------------------------------------------
   176 
   177   * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
   178     dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
   179     and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
   180   * Improved attribute and document node handling.
   181   * Introduced document reference management.
   182   * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
   183 
   184 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
   185 --------------------------------------------------------
   186 
   187   * Fixed createElement.
   188   * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
   189 
   190 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
   191 --------------------------------------------------------
   192 
   193   * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
   194   * Added comment node creation.
   195   * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
   196   * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
   197   * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
   198     behaviour.
   199   * Added experimental XPath method support.
   200 
   201 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
   202 -----------------------
   203 
   204   * Fixed text node creation.
   205   * Fixed setAttributeNS.
   206   * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
   207   * Added the missing previousSibling property.
   208   * Added release number to the package.
   209 
   210 Release Procedures
   211 ------------------
   212 
   213 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
   214 __version__ attributes.
   215 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
   216 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
   217 Update the release notes (see above).
   218 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
   219 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
   220 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
   221 Tag, export.
   222 Archive, upload.
   223 Make packages (see below).
   224 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
   225 
   226 Making Packages
   227 ---------------
   228 
   229 To make Debian-based packages:
   230 
   231   1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
   232   2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
   233      Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
   234 
   235      ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
   236      ln -s packages/debian-stable/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
   237 
   238   3. Run the package builder:
   239 
   240      dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
   241 
   242   4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
   243      distribution's root directory.