[Thuban-announce] Pyshapelib release 1.0

[Bjoern Ricks]

Hi,

I am happy to announce the 1.0 release of pyshapelib a python wrapper for 
shapelib, a free software library for reading and writing ESRI shapefiles, a 
frequently used format for geographic data.

Pyshapelib was originally developed as part of the interactive viewer for 
geographic data Thuban (http://thuban.intevation.org/) but now moved to an 
own home at http://wald.intevation.org/projects/pyshapelib/

The following changes were made since the last 0.3 release:

Module shapelib:

 * Rewritten as a hand-crafted module instead of a SWIG generated one.

 * SHPObject now has a method part_types() to return a tuple of the
   part types when appropriate.  Otherwise, it returns None.

 * Added support for shapetypes with Z and M values.  When creating measured
   shapes (XYM), treat M value as optional (defaults to zero).Similar for 3D 
   shapes (XYZM), treat both Z and M values as optional (both default to
   zero). None is accepted as an M value, but it is stored as zero internally
   (ESRI shapefile specs define any M value smaller than 1e-38 as no-data).

 * Added 'name' and 'mode' keywords for ShapeFile constructors and the
   module's open() function, similiar to Python's file().  

 * Unicode strings are now accepted as filenames, also on Windows.

Module dbflib:

 * Rewritten as a hand-crafted module instead of a SWIG generated one.

 * DBFFile objects can be requested to return string content as unicode, via
   the optional return_unicode argument in create(), open() and the DBFFile 
   constructor.  If so, string content is decoded using the file's codepage.
   Otherwise, the raw encoded string is returned.  return_unicode is False
   by default.

 * DBFFiles now support code pages for string content.  These code pages can 
   either be specified by the numerical LDID field in the .dbf file, or by an 
   additional .cpg file that contains a single string with the code page name.
   Both systems are unified into a single string, the former is of the form
   "LDID/nn" where nn is a _decimal_ number between 1 and 255.

   When creating a DBFFile, you can specify the code page to use by the
   optional code_page argument that defaults to "LDID/87", the ESRI ANSI code
   page 0x57. You can inspect the code page of a DBFFile through the readonly
   code_page member.  

   Code pages are associated to Python codecs through a codecs map (see
   below). This codec is used to encode or decode string content to or from
   dbflib.  You can inspect the used codec by the readonly codec member of
   DBFFile.

   dbflib supports a number of constants of the form LDID_??? and CPG_??? that
   are names of code pages that are supported by the builtin codecs map.

 * An optional custom codecs_map can be passed to create(), open() and the
   DBFFile constructor to map code pages to codecs, for when the builtin
   codecs map does not fit your needs.

   The keys of this map are strings like the values of the constants LDID_???
   and CPG_???.  E.g. "LDID/87" for LDID_ESRI_ANSI (use _decimal_ values in
   the string) or "UTF-8" for UTF-8 encoding.

   The values of this map should be names of Python codecs.  See Python
   Library Reference - 4.9.2 Standard Encodings to see what codecs are
   builtin.

 * Added 'name' and 'mode' keywords for ShapeFile constructors and the
   module's open() function, similiar to Python's file().  

 * Unicode strings are now accepted as filenames, also on Windows.

Regards,
Björn
-- 
Bjoern Ricks |  ++49-541-335083-167  |  http://www.intevation.de/
Intevation GmbH, Neuer Graben 17, 49074 Osnabrück | AG Osnabrück, HR B 18998
Geschäftsführer: Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
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