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 Python Tested with Python 2.4.
24 Python releases from 2.2 onwards should be compatible with
25 libxml2dom. The principal requirement from such releases is the
26 new-style class support which permits the use of properties in
27 the libxml2dom implementation.
28
29 Testing
30 -------
31
32 Some of the tests require libxml2macro.py to be run on the test source code
33 first. Read the docstrings for the various test files before attempting to run
34 any of them. See also docs/NOTES_libxml2macro.txt for more information. Note
35 that such tests are retained for historical purposes and/or curiosity since
36 libxml2macro.py is no longer supported.
37
38 Issues
39 ------
40
41 The presence of xmlns attributes in serialised documents was called into
42 question, and the tests/namespace*.py files attempt to show the current
43 behaviour of libxml2dom.
44
45 Use of importNode seems to cause some kind of memory issue, probably related
46 to nodes being shared across documents. This was observed in libxml2 2.6.0 but
47 appears to be fixed in libxml2 2.6.16.
48
49 Even compared to minidom, importNode may seem very slow (even the
50 libxml2dom.macrolib implementation, too). A way is needed to get libxml2 to do
51 the node copying itself.
52
53 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
54 --------------------------------------------------------
55
56 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
57 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
58 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
59
60 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
61 --------------------------------------------------------
62
63 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
64 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
65
66 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
67 --------------------------------------------------------
68
69 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
70 but whose names are unprefixed.
71 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
72 (hasAttributeNS).
73 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
74 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
75
76 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
77 --------------------------------------------------------
78
79 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
80 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
81
82 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
83 --------------------------------------------------------
84
85 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
86
87 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
88 ------------------------------------------------------
89
90 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
91 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
92 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
93 construction of xmlns attributes.
94
95 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
96 ------------------------------------------------------
97
98 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
99 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
100 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
101 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
102 quite probably various other things.
103 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
104 to crash).
105 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
106 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
107 details.
108
109 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
110 --------------------------------------------------------
111
112 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
113
114 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
115 --------------------------------------------------------
116
117 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
118 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
119 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
120
121 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
122 --------------------------------------------------------
123
124 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
125 current limitations around HTML parsing.
126
127 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
128 ------------------------------------------------------
129
130 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
131 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
132 * Added a normalize implementation.
133 * Added HTML parsing support.
134 * Added prettyprinting support.
135 * Fixed parseURI.
136 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
137 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
138 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
139 automatically.
140 * Improved some of the API documentation.
141 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
142 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
143 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
144 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
145 information.
146 * Added Debian package support.
147
148 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
149 ------------------------------------------------------
150
151 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
152 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
153 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
154 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
155 * Introduced document reference management.
156 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
157
158 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
159 --------------------------------------------------------
160
161 * Fixed createElement.
162 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
163
164 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
165 --------------------------------------------------------
166
167 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
168 * Added comment node creation.
169 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
170 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
171 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
172 behaviour.
173 * Added experimental XPath method support.
174
175 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
176 -----------------------
177
178 * Fixed text node creation.
179 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
180 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
181 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
182 * Added release number to the package.
183
184 Release Procedures
185 ------------------
186
187 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
188 __version__ attributes.
189 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
190 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
191 Update the release notes (see above).
192 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
193 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
194 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
195 Tag, export.
196 Archive, upload.
197 Make packages (see below).
198 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
199
200 Making Packages
201 ---------------
202
203 To make Debian-based packages:
204
205 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
206 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
207 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
208
209 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
210 ln -s packages/debian-stable/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
211
212 3. Run the package builder:
213
214 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
215
216 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
217 distribution's root directory.