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 and tests/namespace2.py files attempt to
43 show the current 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 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
54 --------------------------------------------------------
55
56 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
57
58 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
59 ------------------------------------------------------
60
61 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
62 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
63 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
64 construction of xmlns attributes.
65
66 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
67 ------------------------------------------------------
68
69 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
70 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
71 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
72 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
73 quite probably various other things.
74 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
75 to crash).
76 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
77 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
78 details.
79
80 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
81 --------------------------------------------------------
82
83 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
84
85 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
86 --------------------------------------------------------
87
88 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
89 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
90 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
91
92 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
93 --------------------------------------------------------
94
95 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
96 current limitations around HTML parsing.
97
98 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
99 ------------------------------------------------------
100
101 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
102 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
103 * Added a normalize implementation.
104 * Added HTML parsing support.
105 * Added prettyprinting support.
106 * Fixed parseURI.
107 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
108 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
109 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
110 automatically.
111 * Improved some of the API documentation.
112 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
113 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
114 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
115 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
116 information.
117 * Added Debian package support.
118
119 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
120 ------------------------------------------------------
121
122 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
123 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
124 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
125 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
126 * Introduced document reference management.
127 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
128
129 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
130 --------------------------------------------------------
131
132 * Fixed createElement.
133 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
134
135 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
136 --------------------------------------------------------
137
138 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
139 * Added comment node creation.
140 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
141 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
142 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
143 behaviour.
144 * Added experimental XPath method support.
145
146 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
147 -----------------------
148
149 * Fixed text node creation.
150 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
151 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
152 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
153 * Added release number to the package.
154
155 Release Procedures
156 ------------------
157
158 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
159 __version__ attributes.
160 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
161 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
162 Update the release notes (see above).
163 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
164 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
165 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
166 Tag, export.
167 Archive, upload.
168 Make packages (see below).
169 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
170
171 Making Packages
172 ---------------
173
174 To make Debian-based packages:
175
176 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
177 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
178 Debian tools happy:
179
180 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
181
182 3. Run the package builder:
183
184 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
185
186 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
187 distribution's root directory.