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
69 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
70 --------------------------------------------------------
71
72 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
73 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
74 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
75 * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
76 Wischik.
77
78 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
79 --------------------------------------------------------
80
81 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
82 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
83
84 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
85 --------------------------------------------------------
86
87 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
88 but whose names are unprefixed.
89 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
90 (hasAttributeNS).
91 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
92 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
93
94 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
95 --------------------------------------------------------
96
97 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
98 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
99
100 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
101 --------------------------------------------------------
102
103 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
104
105 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
106 ------------------------------------------------------
107
108 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
109 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
110 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
111 construction of xmlns attributes.
112
113 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
114 ------------------------------------------------------
115
116 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
117 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
118 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
119 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
120 quite probably various other things.
121 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
122 to crash).
123 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
124 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
125 details.
126
127 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
128 --------------------------------------------------------
129
130 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
131
132 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
133 --------------------------------------------------------
134
135 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
136 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
137 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
138
139 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
140 --------------------------------------------------------
141
142 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
143 current limitations around HTML parsing.
144
145 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
146 ------------------------------------------------------
147
148 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
149 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
150 * Added a normalize implementation.
151 * Added HTML parsing support.
152 * Added prettyprinting support.
153 * Fixed parseURI.
154 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
155 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
156 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
157 automatically.
158 * Improved some of the API documentation.
159 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
160 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
161 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
162 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
163 information.
164 * Added Debian package support.
165
166 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
167 ------------------------------------------------------
168
169 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
170 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
171 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
172 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
173 * Introduced document reference management.
174 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
175
176 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
177 --------------------------------------------------------
178
179 * Fixed createElement.
180 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
181
182 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
183 --------------------------------------------------------
184
185 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
186 * Added comment node creation.
187 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
188 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
189 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
190 behaviour.
191 * Added experimental XPath method support.
192
193 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
194 -----------------------
195
196 * Fixed text node creation.
197 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
198 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
199 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
200 * Added release number to the package.
201
202 Release Procedures
203 ------------------
204
205 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
206 __version__ attributes.
207 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
208 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
209 Update the release notes (see above).
210 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
211 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
212 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
213 Tag, export.
214 Archive, upload.
215 Make packages (see below).
216 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
217
218 Making Packages
219 ---------------
220
221 To make Debian-based packages:
222
223 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
224 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
225 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
226
227 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
228 ln -s packages/debian-stable/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
229
230 3. Run the package builder:
231
232 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
233
234 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
235 distribution's root directory.
