From: ser@... (Sean Russell)
Date: 2002-05-28T07:41:20+09:00
Subject: ANN: REXML 2.3.4 and 2.2.2

Before I go into details, let me warn you about two things.  I'm still 
configuring my system to support two branches of one project, so you may 
find some of the links in the 2.2.2 distribution are off.  However, the 
distribution archive is the current stable release, and the links on the 
main index page should be OK.  Also much of the new functionality of the 
development version hasn't been documented; especially the pretty-printing 
stuff.  If you have a hard time figuring it out, email me, or join the 
REXML mailing list and ask there.  I'm aware that the documentation needs 
work.  The documentation always needs work.  :-)

The stable release is (for the moment) living at:

  http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml_stable

although this will change.  There are links to the stable distribution 
archive from the development branch.  The development branch lives at:

  http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
2.2.2 changelog:
* Mike Stok fixed a bug in the starts_with XPath function.
* Fixed a bug in Element.add_namespace. 
* Fixed a bug in Document WRT whitespace outside of the document.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
2.3.4 changelog:
This is a fairly major release, for a minor revision.  There are a number of 
serious bug fixes for XPath as well as improved and extended functionality, 
especially WRT internal DTD parsing.
+++++ XPath:
* Fixed a bug in XPath that kept non-Element nodes from being returned from
  recursive paths. This had a side effect of speeding up XPath recursions.
* XPath methods now accept an array of nodes in addition to a single node.
* Fixed a bug in Functions::string().
* More Functions fixes by Mike Stok.
* There was a major bug in XPath handling of math operations; this was
  fixed.
+++++ Core bug fixes:
* Fixed a bug in Document WRT text outside of the document.
* Lots of bug fixes in PullParser -- it now passes 100% of the Oasis tests.
* Bug fix for stream parsing in Entity.
* Bug fixes in DocType -- SAX2Parser now passes 100% of Oasis tests.
+++++ Added functionality:
* Added peek and unshift methods to the PullParser API.
* Changed the unit tests to the Test::Unit platform. This allows the unit
  tests to be run under a GUI.
* Strings pulled from IO streams are now tainted.
* REXML now processes internal ATTLIST declarations in the doctype. This
  includes processing of XML namespaces in the doctype.  See below (1).
* Changed pretty printing.  Whitespace is now never added around Text nodes,
  and there's a new context property, :ignore_whitespace_nodes.  There's
  also a new transitive pretty printer, obtained by passing "true" as the
  third argument to write().  See below (2).

(1) This means that you can now do things like:
  d = REXML::Document.new <<EOL
    <!DOCTYPE x [
    <!ATTLIST x xmlns CDATA "blah">
    <!ATTLIST a foo CDATA "bar">
    ]>
    <a/>
  EOL
  d = REXML::Document.new(source)
  puts d.root.namespace           #-> 'blah'
  puts d.root.attributes["foo"]   # -> 'bar'

(2) :ignore_whitespace_nodes is most useful in conjunction with the new 
default pretty printer.  The "transitive" pretty printer doesn't require 
it.

I've gotten a lot of really good feedback from a lot of people lately, in 
the form of bug reports and suggestions.  Mike Stok has been especially 
good about contributing not only unit tests, but bug fixes; he's taken the 
thankless job of testing, and sometimes fixing, all of the XPath Function.
Thanks to everybody who's emailed me!

 |..  "The best diplomat I know of is a fully activated phaser bank."
<|>   -- Scotty
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