$Id: Changes,v 1.39 2003/12/22 20:00:34 heikki Exp $

Revision history for Bioperl core modules


1.4 branch

1.4. Stable major release

Since initial 1.2.0, 3000 separate changes have been made to make this release. 

   o installable scripts

   o global module version from Bio::Root:Version

   o Bio::Graphics
      - major improvements; SVG support

   o Bio::Popgen
     - population genetics 
     - support several population genetics types of questions.
     - Tests for statistical neutrality of mutations
       (Fu and Li's D/F, Tajima's D) are in Bio::PopGen::Statistics.
       Tests of population structure (Wright's F-statistic: Fst) is in
       Bio::PopGen::PopStats. Calculating composite linkage
       disequilibrium (LD) is available in Bio::PopGen::Statistics as
       well.
     - Bio::PopGen::IO for reading in prettybase (SeattleSNPs)
       and csv (comma delimited formatted) data.

     - a directory for implementing population simulations has
       been added Bio::PopGen::Simulation and 2 simulations - a
       Coalescent and a simple single-locus multi-allele genetic drift
       simulation have been provided.  This replaces the code in
       Bio::Tree::RandomTree which has been deprecated until proper
       methods for generating random phylogenetic trees are
       implemented.

   o Bio::Restriction
      - new restrion analysis modules

   o Bio::Tools::Analysis
      - web based DNA and Protein analysis framework and several
        implementations

   o Bio::Seq::Meta
     - per residue annotable sequences

   o Bio::Matrix
      - Bio::Matrix::PSM - Position Scoring Matrix
      - Bio::Matrix::IO has been added for generalized parsing of
        matrix data.  Matrix::IO::scoring and Matrix::IO::phylip are
        initial implementations for parsing BLOSUM/PAM and Phylip
        Distance matricies respectively.  A generic matrix
        implementation for general use was added in
        Bio::Matrix::Generic.

   o Bio::Ontology
     - major changes

   o Bio:Tree

   o Bio::Tools::SiRNA, Bio::SeqFeature::SiRNA
     - small inhibitory RNA

   o Bio::SeqFeature::Tools
     - seqFeature mapping tools
     - Bio::SeqFeature::Tools::Unflattener.pm
       -- deal with mapping GenBank feature collections into
          Chado/GFF3 processable feature sets (with SO term mappings)

   o Bio::Tools::dpAlign
     - pure perl dynamic programming sequence alignment
     - needs Bioperl-ext

   o new Bio::SearchIO formats

   o new Bio::SeqIO formats
     - chado, tab, kegg, tigr, game
     - axt and psl:  UCSC formats.
     - blasttable: NCBI -m 8 or -m 9 format from blastall
     - important fixes for old modules

   o Bio::AlignIO: maf

   o improved Bio::Tools::Genewise

   o Bio::SeqIO now can recongnize sequence formats automatically from
     stream

   o new parsers in Bio::Tools:
      Blat, Geneid, Lagan, Mdust, Promoterwise, PrositeScan,  

   o Bio::DB::Registry bugs fixed
     - BerkeleyDB-indexed flat files can be used by the OBDA system
     - Multiple seqdatabase.ini locations in OBDA_SEARCH_PATH are all
       used by the OBDA system

   o several new HOWTOs
     - SimpleWebAnalysis, Trees, Feature Annotation, OBDA Access, Flat
       Databases

   o hundreds of new and improved files 


   o 
   o Bio::Tree::AlleleNode has been updated to be a container of
     an Bio::PopGen::Individual object for use in the Coalescent simulations.


1.2 Branch

1.2.3 Stable release update
    o Bug #1475 - Fix and add speedup to spliced_seq for remote location
                  handling.
    o Bug #1477 - Sel --> Sec abbreviation fixed
    o Fix bug #1487 where paring in-between locations when 
      end < start caused the FTLocationFactory logic to fail.
    o Fix bug #1489 which was not dealing with keywords as an
      arrayref properly (this is fixed on the main trunk because
      keywords returns a string and the array is accessible via
      get_keywords).
    o Bio::Tree::Tree memory leak (bug #1480) fixed
      Added a new initialization option -nodelete which
      won't try and cleanup the containing nodes if this
      is true.
     o Bug with parsing labeled nodes with Bio::TreeIO::newick fixed
       this was only present on the branch for the 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 series
       - Also merged main trunk changes to the branch which make
         newick -> nhx round tripping more effective (storing branch length
         and bootstrap values in same locate for NodeNHX and Node 
         implementations.)  Fixes to TreeIO parsing for labeled internal
         also required small changes to TreeIO::nhx.  Improved
         tests for this module as well.
    o Bio::SearchIO
      - Fixed bugs in BLAST parsing which couldn't parse NCBI
        gapped blast properly (was losing hit significance values due to
        the extra unexpeted column).    
      - Parsing of blastcl3 (netblast from NCBI) now can handle case of
        integer overflow (# of letters in nt seq dbs is > MAX_INT)
        although doesn't try to correct it - will get the negative
        number for you.  Added a test for this as well.
      - Fixed HMMER parsing bug which prevented parsing when a hmmpfam report
        has no top-level family classification scores but does have scores and
        alignments for individual domains.
      - Parsing FASTA reports where ungapped percent ID is < 10 and the 
        regular expression to match the line was missing the possibility of
        an extra space.  This is rare, which is why we probably did not 
        catch it before.
      - BLAST parsing picks up more of the statistics/parameter fields
        at the bottom of reports.  Still not fully complete.
      - SearchIO::Writer::HTMLResultWriter and TextResultWriter
        were fixed to include many improvements and added flexiblity
        in outputting the files.  Bug #1495 was also fixed in the process.
     o Bio::DB::GFF
      - Update for GFF3 compatibility.
      - Added scripts for importing from UCSC and GenBank.
      - Added a 1.2003 version number.
     o Bio::Graphics
      - Updated tutorial.
      - Added a 1.2003 version number.
     o SeqIO::swiss Bug #1504 fixed with swiss writing which was not
       properly writing keywords out.
     o Bio::SeqIO::genbank 
      - Fixed bug/enhancement #1513 where dates of
        the form D-MMM-YYYY were not parsed.  Even though this is
        invalid format we can handle it - and also cleanup the date
        string so it is properly formatted.
      - Bug/enhancement #1517 fixed so that SEGMENT line can be parsed 
        and written with Genbank format.  Similarly bug #1515 is fixed to
        parse in the ORIGIN text.
     o Bio::SeqIO::fasta, a new method called preferred_id_type allows you
       to specify the ID type, one of (accession accession.version 
       display primary).  See Bio::SeqIO::preferred_id_type method
       documentation for more information.
     o Unigene parsing updated to handle file format changes by NCBI

1.2.2 Stable release update

    o A series of bug fixes of the Bio::OntologyIO dagflat-related parsers:
      - auto-discover ontology name
      - bug in parsing relationships when certain characters are in the term
      - fixed hard-coded prefix for term identifiers
      - various smaller issues 

    o Fixed bug in Bio::Annotation::OntologyTerm of not implementing all
      of Bio::Ontology::TermI

    o brought the OBDA Registry code up to latest specs 

    o Bio::DB::GenBank
      - eutils URL change
      - accession number retrieval fixed

    o Bio::SearchIO::blast - fix bug #1443 (missing last hits), parse megablast

    o Bio::SearchIO::Writer::(HTML|Text)ResultWriter fix bugs #1458, 
      #1459 which now properly report alignment start/end info
      for translated BLAST/FASTA searches.
    
    o Bio::TreeIO::newick can parse labeled internal nodes

    o Bio::Tools::BPbl2seq can properly report strand info for HSPs 
      for BLASTX if if you provide -report_type => 'BLASTX' when
      initializing a BPbl2seq object.  Bioperl 1.3 will have better
      support for bl2seq in the SearchIO system.

    o Bio::Root::IO support a -noclose boolean flag which will not
      close a filehandle upon object cleanup - useful when sharing
      a filehandle among objects.  Additionally code added s.t.
      STDOUT/STDIN/STDERR will never be closed by Root::IO cleanup.

    o Bio::Tools::Genemark bug #1435 fixed which was missing last prediction

    o Bio::SeqIO::genbank 
      - bug #1456 fixed which generated extra sequence lines
      - write moltype correctly for genpept

1.2.1 Stable release update

    o Inclusion of WrapperBase, a needed component for StandAloneBlast

    o Addition from main trunk of Ontology objects, principly to allow
      BioSQL releases against 1.2.1

    o Fixes and cleanup of Bio::Coordinate modules

    o A fix to Bio::Index::EMBL allowing  retrieval of entries using
      the primary accession number
 
    o Other bug fixes, including bpindex GenBank fix
   
    o Bio::SeqIO::genbank bug #1389 fixed

1.2  Stable major release
 
    o More functionality added to Bio::Perl, the newbie module

    o Bug fixes in Bio::TreeIO::newick fixes bug introduced in 1.0.2
      Support for New Hampshire Extended (NHX) format parsing.

    o Bio::Tools added support for parsing Genomewise, Pseudowise, Est2Genome,
      Tmhmm, SignalP, Seg, RepeatMasker, FootPrinter, and a lightweight
      Hmmpfam parser.

    o New ontology parsing Bio::Ontology

    o Bug fixes in Bio::SearchIO for HMMer parsing, support for
      multi-report (mlib) fasta reports, support for waba and exonerate.

    o Bio::ClusterIO for parsing Unigene clusters

    o Bio::Assembly added for representing phrap and ace assembly clusters.

    o Rudimentary support for writing Chado XML (see 
      GMOD project: www.gmod.org for more information) 

    o Bio::Coordinate for mapping between different coordinate systems such 
      as protein -> cDNA -> Exon -> DNA and back.  Useful for mapping
      features into different coordinate systems.  

    o Bio::DB::GenBank/Bio::DB::GenPept now support Entrez queries
      with the get_Stream_by_query method and supports the latest
      NCBI eutils interface.

    o Bugs fixed in Bio::SeqFeature::Collection an in-memory fast
      object for extracting subsets of features : currently only
      supports extraction by location.

1.1.1 Developer release

    o Deprecated modules are now listed in the DEPRECATED file

    o New HowTo documents located in doc/howto describing 
      a domain of Bioperl.

    o Note that bugs are now stored at bugzilla.bioperl.org
      and all old bugs are searchable through the bugzilla interface.

    o Several reported bugs in Bio::Tools::Sigcleave and Bio::SimpleAlign 
      have been addressed.

    o Support for Genewise parsing in Bio::Tools::Genewise

    o Start of Ontology framework with Bio::Ontology

    o Speedup to the Bio::Root::Root object method _rearrange.
      A global _load_module method was implemented to simplify the
      dynamic loading of modules ala Bio::SeqIO::genbank.  This
      method is now used by all the XXIO (AlignIO,TreeIO,SearchIO,SeqIO,
      etc).

    o Several performance improvements to sequence parsing in Bio::SeqIO.
      Attempt to speedup by reducing object creation overhead.

    o Bio::DB::GenBank and Bio::DB::GenPept use the NCBI's approved
      method for sequence retrieval with their E-utils CGI scripts.
      More work to support Entrez queries to their fullest is planned
      before 1.2 release.

    o Numerous fixes to Bio::SearchIO and sequence parsing (swissprot)

1.1 Developer release 

    o Bio::Tools::Run has been broken off into a new pkg bioperl-run,
      this separation removes some of the complexity in our test suite
      and separates the core modules in bioperl from those that need
      external programs to run.

    o With latest ExtUtils::MakeMaker module installed SGI/IRIX should
      not run into trouble running the makefile

    o Bio::Location and Bio::SeqIO::FTHelper are fixed to properly 
      read,create,and write locations for grouped/split locations
      (like mRNA features on genomic sequence).  

    o Bio::Tools::Phlyo added for wrappers for parsing Molphy (protml)
      and PAML (codeml,aaml, etc) parsing.

    o Bio::Tree:: objects expanded to handle testing monophyly,
      paraphyly, least common ancestor, etc.

    o Bio::Coordinate for mapping locations from different coordinate spaces 

    o Bio::SearchIO::waba added for parsing WABA, Bio::SearchIO::hmmer
      added for parsing hmmpfam and hmmsearch output.

    o Bio::SearchIO::Writer::TextResultWriter for outputting
      a pseudo-blast textfile format


1.0.2 Bug fix release

    o Note: The modules Bio::DB::GenBank and Bio::DB::GenPept provided
      in this release will not work after December 2002 when NCBI
      shuts off the old Entrez cgi scripts.  We have already fixed
      on our main development branch and the functionality will be
      available in the next stable bioperl release (1.2) slated for
      Fall 2002.
 
    o Numerous parsing bugs in Bio::SearchIO::fasta found through 
      testset by Robin Emig.  These were fixed as was the get_aln
      method in Bio::Search::HSP::GenericHSP to handle the extra 
      context sequence that is provided with a FastA alignment.
    
    o Migrating differences between Bio::Search::XX::BlastXX to 
      Bio::Search::XX::GenericXX objects.  This included mechanism
      to retrieve whole list of HSPs from Hits and whole list of Hits from 
      Results in addition to the current next_XX iterator methods that
      are available.  Added seq_inds() method to GenericHSP which identifies
      indexes in the query or hit sequences where conserved,identical,gaps, 
      or mismatch residues are located (adapted from Steve Chervitz's 
      implementation in BlastHSP).

    o Bio::DB::GFF bugs fixed and are necessary for latest GBrowse release.
      Bio::DB::GFF::RelSegment is now Bio::SeqI compliant.
      
    o Bio::Graphics glyph set improved and extended for GBrowse release

    o Bio::Tree::Tree get_nodes implementation improvement thanks
      to Howard Ross notice performance problem when writing out 
      unbalanced trees.

    o Bio::Location::Fuzzy::new named parameter -loc_type became
      -location_type, Bio::Location::Simple::new named parameter
      -seqid becamse -seq_id.
   
    o Fixed major Bio::AlignIO::emboss parsing bug on needle output,
      was mis-detecting that gaps should be placed at the beginning of
      the alignment when the best alignment starts internally in the
      sequence.

1.0.1 Bug fix release
	
    o Minor bug fixes to Bio::DB:GFF.  Glyph sets improved.
 
    o Parser fixes in SearchIO blast, fasta for more complete WU BLAST 
      and mixed (3.3 - 3.4) versions of FASTA.

    o Small API change to add methods for completeness across 
      implementations of Bio::Search objects.  These new methods
      in the interface are implemented by the GenericXX object as well 	
      as the BlastXX objects.
	* Bio::Search::Result::ResultI 
	 - hits() method returns list of all Hits (next_hit is an 
	   iterator method)
	 	
	* Bio::Search::Hit::HitI
	 - hsps() method returns list of all HSPs (next_hsp is an 
           iterator method)
	
    o The Bio::SearchIO::Writer classes have been fixed to handle results 
       created from either psiblast (Search::BlastXX objects) or 
       blast|fasta|blastxml objects (Search::GenericXX objects).  More work 
       has to be done here to make it work properly and will nee major 
       API changes.

    o Bugs in Bio::Tools::HMMER fixed, including
       * #1178 - Root::IO destructor wasn't being called
       * #1034 - filter_on_cutoff now behaves properly
 
    o Bio::SeqFeature::Computation initialization args fixed and 
      tests added.

    o Tests are somewhat cleaner, flat.t now properly cleans up after itsself,
      
    o Updated FAQ with more example based answers to typical questions

    o Bug #1202 was fixed which would improperly join together qual values
      parsed by Bio::SeqIO::qual when a trailing space was not present before
      the newline.

1.0.0 Major Stable Release

  This represents a major release of bioperl with significant
  improvements over the 0.7.x series of releases.   

    o Bio::Tools::Blast is officially deprecated.  Please see
      Bio::SearchIO for BLAST and FastA parsing.

    o The methods trunc() and subseq() in Bio::PrimarySeqI now accepts
      Bio::LocationI objects as well as start/end.

    o Bio::Biblio contains modules for Bibliographic data. 
      Bio::DB::Biblio contains the query modules.  Additionally one can
      parse medlinexml from the ebi bibliographic query service (BQS)
      system and Pubmed xml from NCBI.  See Martin Senger's
      documentation in Bio::Biblio for more information.
    
    o Bio::DB::Registry is a sequence database registry part of 
      Open Bioinformatics Database Access.  See
      http://obda.open-bio.org for more information.
    
    o File-based and In-Memory Sequence caching is provided by
      Bio::DB::InMemoryCache and Bio::DB::FileCache which acts like a
      local database.

    o Bio::Graphics for rendering sequences as PNG,JPG, or GIFs has
      been added by Lincoln Stein.

    o XEMBL SOAP service access in provided in Bio::DB::XEMBL.

    o A FAQ has been started and is included in the release to provide
      a starting point for frequent questions and issues.

0.9.3 Developer's release
    
    o Event based parsing system improved (SearchIO).  With parsers for
      XML Blast (blastxml), Text Blast (blast), and FASTA results (fasta).  
      Additionally a lazy parsing system for text and html blast reports was
      added and is called psiblast (name subject to change in future releases).

    o Bio::Search objects improved and standardized with associated Interfaces
      written.  The concept of a search "Hit" was standardized to be called
      "hit" consistently and the use of "subject" was deprecated in all active
      modules.

    o Bio::Structure added (since 0.9.1) for Protein structure objects 
      and PDB parser to retrieve and write these structures from data files. 

    o Several important Bio::DB::GFF bug fixes for handling features that
      are mapped to multiple reference points.  Updated mysql adaptor
      so as to be able to store large (>100 megabase) chunks of DNA into
      Bio::DB::GFF databases.

0.9.2 Developer's release

    o Bio::Search and Bio::SearchIO system introduced for event based
      parsing of Blast,Fasta reports Bio::SearchIO supports ncbi BLAST
      in text and XML and FASTA reports in standard output format.

    o Bio::Tree and Bio::TreeIO for phylogenetic trees.  A Random tree
      generator is included in Bio::TreeIO::RandomTrees and a
      statistics module for evaluating.
      
    o Bio::DB::GFF, Lincoln Stein's GFF database suitable as a DB
      server for DAS servers.

    o Bio::Tools::BPlite is provides more robust parsing of BLAST
      files.  The entire BPlite system migrated to using Bio::Root::IO
      for the data stream.
	
    o Bio::Tools::Alignment for Consed and sequence Trimming
      functionality.
 
    o Bio::Structure for Protein structure information and parsing

    o Bio::DB::GenBank/Bio::DB::GenPept updated to new NCBI Entrez
      cgi-bin entry point which should be more reliable.
   
    o Bio::Map and Bio::MapIO for biological map navigation and a
      framework afor parsing them in.  Only preliminary work here.
 
    o Interface for executing EMBOSS programs locally in Bio::Factory::EMBOSS
      Future work will integrate Pise and allow submission of analysis on
      remote servers.

    o Bio::AnnotationCollectionI and Bio::Annotation::Collection
      introduced as new objects for handling Sequence Annotation
      information (dblinks, references, etc) and is more robust that
      previous system.
 
    o Bio::Tools::FASTAParser introduced.

    o Scripts from the bioperl script submission project and new
      scripts from bioperl authors are included in "scripts" directory.

    o Factory objects and interfaces are being introduced and are more
      strictly enforced.
	
    o Bio::Root::Root introduced as the base object while
      Bio::Root::RootI is now simply an interface.

    o Bio::DB::RefSeq provides database access to copy of the NCBI
      RefSeq database using the EBI dbfetch script.

0.9.0 Developer's release

    o perl version at least 5.005 is now required instead of perl 5.004

    o Bio::Tools::Run::RemoteBlast is available for running remote 
      blast jobs at NCBI.

    o Bio::Tools::BPbl2seq was fixed to handle multiple HSPs.

    o Bio::SeqFeature::GeneStructure migrated to Bio::SeqFeature::Gene.
      Also added are related modules UTR3, UTR5, Exon, Intron, 
      Promotor, PolyA and Transcript.

    o Speedup of translate method in PrimarySeq     

    o Bio::SimpleAlign has new methods: location_from_column(), slice(),
      select(), dot(), get_seq_by_pos(), column_from_residue_number()

    o Various fixes to Variation toolkit
    
    o Bio::DB::EMBL provides database access to EMBL sequence data.
      Bio::DB::Universal provides a central way to point to indexes
      and dbs in a single interface.

    o Bio::DB::GFF - a database suitable for running DAS servers locally.

    o Bio::Factory::EMBOSS is still in design phase as is  
      Bio::Factory::ApplicationFactoryI

    o Dia models for bioperl design are provided in the models/ directory

0.7.2 Bug fix release

    o documentation fixes in many modules - SYNOPSIS code verified 
      to be runnable in many (but not all modules)

    o corrected MANIFEST file from 0.7.1 release
   
    o Bug fix in Bio::SeqIO::FTHelper to properly handle
      split locations

    o Bio::SeqIO::genbank 
	* Correct parsing and writing of genbank format with protein data
	* moltype and molecule separation	                   

    o Bio::SeqIO::largefasta fix to avoid inifinite loops
	
    o Bio::SimpleAlign fixed to correctly handle consensus 
      sequence calculation

    o Bio::Tools::HMMER supports hmmer 2.2g

    o Bio::Tools::BPlite to support report type specific parsing.  Most 
      major changes are not on the 0.7 branch.
   
    o Bio::Tools::Run::StandAloneBlast exists_blast() fixed and works 
      with File::Spec 

    o Bio::Variation::AAChange/RNAChange corrected labels and mutated alleles 
	in several types of mutations:
        1.) AA level: deletion, complex
        2.) AA level: complex, inframe
        3.) RNA level: silent

    o  BPbl2seq parsing of empty reports will not die, but will return
       a valid, empty, Bio::SeqFeature::SimilarityFeature for
       $report->query() and $report->subject() methods.  So an easy
       way to test if report was empty is to see if
       $report->query->seqname is undefined.

0.7.1 Bug fix release 

    o Better parsing of genbank/EMBL files especially fixing bugs
      related to Feature table parsing and locations on remote
      sequences.  Additionally, species name parsing was better.

    o Bio::SeqIO::genbank can parse now NCBI produced genbank database
      which include a number of header lines.

    o More strict genbank and EMBL format writing (corrected number of
      spaces where appropriate).

    o Bio::Tools::BPlite can better parse BLASTX reports - see BUGS
      for related BPlite BUGS that are unresolved in this release.
  
    o Bio::DB::GenBank, Bio::DB::GenPept have less problems
      downloading sequences from NCBI via HTTP.  Bio::DB::SwissProt can
      use expasy mirrors or EBI dbfetch cgi-script.

    o A moderate number of documentation improvements were made as
      well to provide a better code synopsis in each module.


0.7  Large number of changes, including refactoring of the
     Object system, new parsers, new functionality and
     all round better system. Highlights are:


     o Refactored root of inheritance: moved to a lightweight Bio::Root::RootI;
       Bio::Root::IO for I/O and file/handle capabilities.

     o Imported BPlite modules from Ian Korf for BLAST
       parsing. This is considered the supported BLAST parser;
       Bio::Tools::Blast.pm will eventually phase out due to lack of support.

     o Improved Sequence Feature model. Added complete location
       modelling (with fuzzy and compound locations).  See
       Bio::LocationI and the modules under Bio/Location.  Added
       support in Genbank/EMBL format parsing to completely parse
       feature tables for complex locations.

     o Moved special support for databanks etc to specialized modules under
       Bio/Seq/. One of these supports very large sequences through 
       a temporary file as a backend.

     o Explicit Gene, Transcript and Exon SeqFeature objects, supporting
       CDS retrieval and exon shuffling.

     o More parsers: Sim4, Genscan, MZEF, ESTScan, BPbl2seq, GFF

     o Refactored Bio/DB/GenBank+GenPept. There is now also DB/SwissProt and
       DB/GDB (the latter has platform-specific limitations).

     o New analysis parser framework for HT sequence annotation (see
       Bio::SeqAnalysisParserI and Bio::Factory::SeqAnalysisParserFactory)

     o New Alignment IO framework

     o New Index modules (Swissprot)

     o New modules for running Blast within perl
       (Bio::Tools::Run::StandAloneBlast). Added modules for running
       Multiple Sequence Alignment tools ClustalW and TCoffee
       (Bio::Tools::Run::Alignment).

     o New Cookbook-style tutorial (see bptutorial.pl). Improved
       documentation across the package.

     o Much improved cross platform support. Many known incompatibilities
       have been fixed; however, NT and Mac do not work across the entire
       setup (see PLATFORMS).

     o Many bug fixes, code restructuring, etc. Overall stability and
       maintainability benefit a lot.

     o A total of 957 automatic tests
    

0.6.2  

   There are very few functionality changes but a large
   number of software improvements/bug fixes across the package.

   o The EMBL/GenBank parsing are improved.
 
   o The Swissprot reading is improved. Swissprot writing
     is disabled as it doesn't work at all. This needs to
     wait for 0.7 release
 
   o BLAST reports with no hits are correctly parsed.
 
   o Several other bugs of the BLAST parser (regular expressions, ...)
     fixed.

   o Old syntax calls have been replaced with more modern syntax
 
   o Modules that did not work at all, in particular the Sim4
     set have been removed

   o Bio::SeqFeature::Generic and Bio::SeqFeature::FeaturePair
     have improved compliance with interface specs and documentation

   o Mailing list documentation updated throughout the distribution

   o Most minor bug fixes have happened.

   o The scripts in /examples now work and have the modern syntax
     rather than the deprecated syntax


0.6.1  Sun April 2 2000

   o Sequences can have Sequence Features attached to them
        - The sequence features can be read from or written to
          EMBL and GenBank style flat files

   o Objects for Annotation, including References (but not
     full medline abstracts), Database links and Comments are
     provided

   o A Species object to represent nodes on a taxonomy tree
     is provided

   o The ability to parse HMMER and Sim4 output has been added

   o The Blast parsing has been improved, with better PSI-BLAST
     support and better overall behaviour.

   o Flat file indexed databases provide both random access 
     and sequential access to their component sequences.

   o A CodonTable object has been written with all known 
     CodonTables accessible.

   o A number of new lightweight analysis tools have been
     added, such as molecular weight determination.

    The 0.6 release also has improved software engineering
  
   o The sequence objects have been rewritten, providing more
     maintainable and easier to implement objects. These
     objects are backwardly compatible with the 0.05.1 objects

   o Many objects are defined in terms of interfaces and then  
     a Perl implementation has been provided. The interfaces
     are found in the 'I' files (module names ending in 'I').

     This means that it is possible to wrap C/CORBA/SQL access
     as true "bioperl" objects, compatible with the rest of
     bioperl.

   o The SeqIO system has been overhauled to provide better
     processing and perl-like automatic interpretation of <>
     over arguments.

   o Many more tests have been added (a total of 172 automatic
     tests are now run before release).



0.05.1 Tue Jun 29 05:30:44 1999
        - Central distribution now requires Perl 5.004. This was
          done to get around 5.003-based problems in Bio/Index/* 
          and SimpleAlign.
        - Various bug fixes in the Bio::Tools::Blast modules
          including better exception handling and PSI-Blast 
          support. See Bio/Tools/Blast/CHANGES for more.
        - Fixed the Parse mechanism in Seq.pm to use readseq.
	  Follow the instructions in README for how to install
	  it (basically, you have to edit Parse.pm).
        - Improved documentation of Seq.pm, indicating where 
          objects are returned and where strings are returned.
        - Fixed uninitialized warnings in Bio::Root::Object.pm
          and Bio::Tools::SeqPattern.pm.
        - Bug fixes for PR#s: 30,31,33-35,41,42,44,45,47-50,52.

0.05  Sun Apr 25 01:14:11 1999
        - Bio::Tools::Blast modules have less memory problems
          and faster parsing. Webblast uses LWP and supports
          more functionality. See Bio/Tools/Blast/CHANGES for more.
        - The Bio::SeqIO system has been started, moving the
          sequence reformatting code out of the sequence object
        - The Bio::Index:: system has been started, providing
          generic index capabilities and specifically works for
          Fasta formatted databases and EMBL .dat formatted 
	  databases
        - The Bio::DB:: system started, providing access to 
          databases, both via flat file + index (see above) and
          via http to NCBI
        - The scripts/ directory, where industrial strength scripts
          are put has been started.
        - Many changes - a better distribution all round.

0.04.4  Wed Feb 17 02:20:13 1999
	- Bug fixes in the Bio::Tools::Blast modules and postclient.pl
	  (see Bio::Tools::Blast::CHANGES).
        - Fixed a bug in Bio::Tools::Fasta::num_seqs().
        - Beefed up the t/Fasta.t test script.
        - Small fix in Bio::Seq::type() (now always returns a string).
        - Changed Bio::Root::Utilities::get_newline_char() to 
          get_newline() since it could return more than one char.
        - Added $NEWLINE and $TIMEOUT_SECS to Bio::Root::Global.
        - Changed default timeout to 20 seconds (was 3).
        - Moved lengthy modification notes to the bottom of some files.
	- Fixed SimpleAlign write_fasta bug.
	- Beefed up SimpleAlign.t test

0.04.3  Thu Feb  4 07:48:53 1999
        - Bio::Root::Object.pm and Global.pm now detect when
          script is run as a CGI and suppress output that is only
          appropriate when running interactively.
        - Bio::Root::Err::_set_context() adds name of script ($0).
        - Added comments in Bio::Tools::WWW.pm and Bio::Root::Utilities.pm
          regarding the use of the static objects via the qw(:obj) tag.
        - Fixed the ambiguous reverse calls in Seq.pm and UnivAln.pm to 
          CORE::reverse, avoiding Perl warnings.
        - Bug fixes in Bio::Tools::Blast modules (version 0.074) and 
          example scripts (see Bio::Tools::Blast::CHANGES).
        - examples/seq/seqtools.pl no longer always warns about using 
          -prot or -nucl command-line arguments; only when using the 
          -debug argument.
        - Methods added to Bio::Root::Utilities: create_filehandle(), 
          get_newline_char(), and taste_file() to generalize filehandle 
          creation and autodetect newline characters in files/streams
          (see bug report #19).
        - Bio::Root::IOManager::read() now handles timeouts and uses
          Utilities::create_filehandle().
        - Bio::Tools::Fasta.pm uses Utilities::get_newline_char() instead
          of hardwiring in "\n".
        - Bug fixes in the Bio::SimpleAlign and Bio::Tools::pSW

0.04.2  Wed Dec 30 02:27:36 1998
        - Bug fixes in Bio::Tools::Blast modules, version 0.073
          (see Bio::Tools::Blast::CHANGES).
        - Changed reverse calls in Bio/Seq.pm and Bio/UnivAln.pm
          to CORE::reverse (prevents ambiguous warnings with 5.005).
        - Appending '.tmp.bioperl' to temporary files created by
          Bio::Root::Utilities::compress() or uncompress() to
          make it easy to identify & cleanup these files as needed.
        - Developers: Created CVS branch release-0-04-bug from
          release-0-04-1. Before making bug fixes to the 0.04.1 release,
          be sure to cvs checkout this branch into a clean area.

0.04.1  Wed Dec 16 05:39:15 1998
        - Bug fixes in Bio::Tools::Blast modules, version 0.072
          (see Bio::Tools::Blast::CHANGES).
        - Compile/SW/Makefile.PL now removes *.o and *.a files 
          with make clean.

0.04  Tue Dec  8 07:49:19 1998
        - Lots of new modules added including:
           * Ewan Birney's Bio::SimpleAlign.pm, Bio::Tools::AlignFactory.pm,
             and Bio/Compile directory containing XS-linked C code for
             creating Smith-Waterman sequence alignments from within Perl.
           * Steve Chervitz's Blast distribution has been incorporated.
           * Georg Fuellen's Bio::UnivAln.pm for multiple alignment objects.
        - Bio/examples directory for demo scripts for all included modules.
        - Bio/t directory containing test suit for all included modules.
        - For changes specific to the Blast-related modules prior to
          incorporation in this central distribution, see the CHANGES
          file in the Bio/Tools/Blast directory.
     
0.01  Tue Sep  8 14:23:22 1998
        - original version from central CVS tree; created by h2xs 1.18

