[XML-SIG] ANN: XIST 2.0

Walter Dörwald walter@livinglogic.de
Wed, 16 Oct 2002 19:39:14 +0200


XIST 2.0 has been released!


What is it?
===========

XIST is an XML-based extensible HTML generator written in Python.
XIST is also a DOM parser (built on top of SAX2) with a very simple
and Pythonesque tree API. Every XML element type corresponds to a
Python class, and these Python classes provide a conversion method
to transform the XML tree (e.g., into HTML). XIST can be considered
"object oriented XSL".


What's new in version 2.0?
==========================

   * XIST now requires at least Python 2.2.1.
   * Attribute handling has been largely rewritten. Instead of a class
     attribute attrHandlers, the attributes are now defined by deriving
     from the builtin attribute classes. The benefits: docstrings,
     default values, sets of allowed attribute values and whether
     a attribute is required can now be specified.
   * XIST now has namespace support for parsing and publishing.
     Namespace support is even available for entities and
     processing instruction.
   * Global attributes are supported now. Namespace modules for the
     xml and xlink namespaces have been added.
   * A new namespace module for SVG 1.0 has been added.
   * The HTML specific parts of ll.xist.ns.specials have been split
     off into a separate module ll.xist.ns.htmlspecials.
   * Comparison of attributes with strings has been removed.
   * The HTMLParser now removes unknown attributes instead of
     complaining.
   * There is a new parser class BadEntityParser, which recognizes
     the character entities defined in HTML and tries to pass on
     unknown or malformed entities to the handler literally.
   * Many other small bug fixes and enhancements.

For changes in older versions see:
http://www.livinglogic.de/Python/xist/History.html


Where can I get it?
===================

XIST can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.livinglogic.de/pub/livinglogic/xist/

Web pages are at
http://www.livinglogic.de/Python/xist/

ViewCVS access is available at
http://www.livinglogic.de/viewcvs/


Bye,
    Walter Dörwald