pyexiv2-developers team mailing list archive

[Olivier Tilloy <olivier@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello pyexiv2 users and developers!

I'm pleased to announce that I now consider pyexiv2 0.2 (development 
branch) complete and stable enough to start pre-release testing.

Your help in making sure that this version matches your expectations is 
greatly appreciated. I myself tested it quite extensively but I surely 
miss a lot of use cases, and I would like to hear about your experience 
with it. In particular, I'm interested in checking that:

 - there are no regressions compared to the previous version (0.1.3)
 - known bugs and limitations with 0.1.3 are fixed in this version

Since 0.2 is mostly a complete rewrite, a lot has changed, and the API 
is _not_ backward compatible with the 0.1 series. This means that your 
scripts and programs will need some adaptations to use the new version. 
The good news is that this new version gives you access to more 
information (including the long-awaited XMP metadata).

The API is partly documented, and one of my goals for this release is to 
have it fully documented (that will include tutorial update and a 
readable API documentation). In the meantime, here are some hints about 
the changes:

 - pyexiv2.Image is now called pyexiv2.ImageMetadata
 - the readMetadata() and writeMetadata() methods are now called read() 
and write()
 - accessing tags using the [] operator on an ImageMetadata object will 
return tag objects (where it previously returned only the value of the 
tag): ExifTag, IptcTag, XmpTag
 - the tags store quite a lot of useful information about themselves, 
including key, description, raw value (string), value (translated to a 
pythonic type where applicable), ...
 - IptcTag objects always store a list of values even when the tag is 
not repeatable (check the repeatable property)

Instructions for testing:

# Get the latest revision of the 0.2 branch
bzr branch lp:pyexiv2 && cd pyexiv2
# Compile it
scons
# Install it (to be run with administrative rights)
scons install

When testing, make sure you have a backup of your data, especially if 
you are modifying or writing metadata to files! Please report bugs at 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/pyexiv2/+filebug. Any questions/doubts should 
be directed to this mailing-list.

My plans for the release include a windows installer. Since I'm not a 
windows guy, I appreciate any help and hints in this field.

Regards,

Olivier