Version 0.9.8
=============

pydicom 0.9.8 is mainly a consolidation step before moving to official Python 3
compatibility in pydicom 1.0.  It also reverts the change to using Decimal for
VR of DS (in pydicom 0.9.7), due to performance issues. DS as Decimal is still
available, but is off by default.

Major changes
-------------

* Requires Python 2.6 or later, in preparation for Python 3 compatibility
* experimental Python 3 compatibility (unofficial at this point) -- uncomment
  the two indicated lines in setup.py to use it. Please provide feedback to the
  issues list.
* DS values reverted to using float as default (issue 114) due to slow
  performance using Python Decimal. Speed tests show approx factor of 10
  improvement compared with pydicom 0.9.7 (several revisions up to
  r78ba350a3eb8)
* streamlined much code internally taking advantage of modern Python
  constructs: decorators, generators, etc

Bug fixes
---------

* Fix for duplicate logger from Gunnar Schaefer. Fixes issue 107 (revision
  774b7a55db33)
* Fix rewind behavior in find_bytes (issue 60, revision 6b949a5b925b)
* Fix error in nested private sequences (issue 113, revision 84af4b240add)


Enhancements
------------

* UID generator added (Félix C. Morency) (revisions 0197b5846bb5 and
  3678b1be6aca, tests in f1ae573d9de5, 0411bab7c985)
* new PersonName3 class for Python 3: (revision 9b92b336e7d4)

Contrib file changes
--------------------

* Fix for pydicom_series for DS decimal (revision e830f30b6781)
* new dcm_qt_tree.py module - tree display of DICOM files using PySide and
  Qt. Contributed by Padraig Looney.

Special acknowledgement to Jonathan Suever who contributed most of the Python 3
work and many bug fixes.
