$Id: RELEASE-NOTES.txt,v 1.4 2002/04/28 03:38:29 craigmcc Exp $

                          Commons Digester Package
                                Version 1.2
                               Release Notes


INTRODUCTION:
============

This document contains the release notes for this version of the Commons
Digester package, and highlights changes since the previous version.


NEW FEATURES:
============


Logging:
-------

All components of the commons-digester package now use the commons-logging
package for logging, which means that the Digester classes will transparently
adapt to whatever logging implementation your application is using.  Set the
logging detail level to DEBUG or TRACE to receive debugging output.  The
following log names are utilized:
  org.apache.commons.digester.Digester
  org.apache.commons.digester.Digester.sax


XML Rules Support:
-----------------

You can now define Digester Rules in an XML-based format that is loaded at
runtime, rather than requiring programmatic declaration of the relevant rules.
Details are in the org.apache.commons.digester.xmlrules package.


Digester Enhancements:
---------------------

The parse() method that accepts a File parameter will now create an InputSource
that declares a system identifier for the file containing the XML document to
be parsed.  This allows relative references to other XML entities to be
resolved correctly.


Rule Enhancements:
-----------------

A no-arguments constructor for Rule has been added, so that you can dynamically
instantiate Rule instances like any other JavaBean.

Rules that invoke methods dynamically now take advantage of the new
commons-beanutils facilities for matching methods by compatible argument types,
rather than requiring an exact match.

You can now use CallMethodRule to call methods that take no arguments.

New BeanPropertySetterRule allows you to set arbitrary properties of the
top element on the evaluation stack.

New SetRootRule allows convenient access to the root element on the
evaluation stack.


BUG REPORTS ADDRESSED:
=====================

4519 Digester#parse() throws NullPointerException if unable to instantiate
     SAX parser
4553 Digester always logs exceptions
5804 SetTopRule description: swap parent and child?
6043 [PATCH] for SetTopRule.java to fix misleading debug message and other
     clarifications
6290 Unsafe handling of Throwable
6524 Minor error in digester java-doc
8244 CallMethodRule can't be used to call no arg methods
8461 Digester parse(File) is crippled in two aspects