RELEASENOTES

Release Notes for version 5.0.0
===============================

New since 4.4.6
===============

* New function ReadCifWithError may be used instead of ReadCif. It will not
raise an Exception on a parse error, instead returning the
partially populated CIF object and parse information.

* Similar to the above, when the CifFile constructor is called with new option
'allow_partial = True', parsing information is available
by calling the get_parsing_result method on the returned
CifFile object instead of raising an exception (thanks to Inigo Gabirondo
for work on these two items).

* Dictionary merging and validation has been improved (Inigo Gabirondo)

* A helpful convert_to_canonical method is provided for CifFile objects. When
called with a dictionary, data names are converted to canonical form
(Inigo Gabirondo).

* Previously deprecated methods and classes are now gone: AddCifItem, AddToLoop,
and ValidCifFile

Developer-visible changes
=========================

From version 5.0.0 noweb files (*.nw) for source have been removed. It was
too much of a barrier for Windows-based developers to contribute. The
.py files are now the canonical source, with the original literate
programming sections converted to python comments.

Python 3 notes
==============

* In the original Python 2 version, the top-level `CifFile` module
imported everything from the `CifFile.py` and `StarFile.py`
modules. This meant that it was sufficient for your code to include
`from CifFile import x`, where x is anything defined in CifFile.py or
StarFile.py.  This has been replicated in Python 3 by explicitly
importing those classes and functions in CifFile_module.py and
StarFile.py required for the tests to succeed. If your code uses a
function not included in the tests (note that all classes and
therefore their methods are included) you will need to refer to it as
`CifFile.CifFile_module.x` (for a function named `x` in
`CifFile_module.py`).