version 0.8.6
 - Fixed WorbSub module to work with words that consist entirely of punctuation :-).
 - Fixed PatternMgr module to replace non-alphanumerics with whitespace instead of simply
   consuming them (thanks to Hugh Sasse for the patch).
 - Added workaround to avoid a rare IOError exception when processing <system> tags
   (thanks to Duncan Gough for the patch).
 - PyAIML is now released under the FreeBSD license.

version 0.8.5
 - Fixed a couple lingering Unicode bugs, one of which was breaking things
   pretty thoroughly under Python 2.2.3.
 - Improved whitespace handling, to the point where it should be compliant
   with the AIML 1.0.1 standard.  Basically, whitespace will be stripped
   down to readable levels, unless the xml:space attribute is used to
   indicate otherwise.
 - Fixed bug in PatternMgr where the character '1' was mistaken identified
   as punctuation to be stripped, instead of the intended '!'.

version 0.8.4:
 - Fixed bug in AimlParser creation, if the aiml module was not in the same
   directory as the script that imported it.
 - Improved Unicode support (again) (thanks to Daniel Kottow for his help).
 - 2nd pass at documentation.  All functions now have useful, properly-formatted
   docstrings.

version 0.8.3:
 - Reworked the way AimlParser objects are created, to allow support for
   XML namespaces in a future version.
 - First pass at Unicode-proofing the whole system, so that multi-lingual
   AIML files can be processed.
 - Added support for "index" attribute in "star", "thatstar" and "topicstar"
   elements (thanks to Robert D. Cotey for the patch!).  Also added type-check
   to ensure that the value of the "index" attribute is an integer.

version 0.8.2:
 - Added protection against infinite AIML recursion.
 - Removed the deprecated Kernel.getBotName and Kernel.setBotName functions.
 - Added workaround for Unicode input crash.  Feeding the Kernel Unicode
   input no longer crashes the interpreter, but some internal input-formatting
   operations must be skipped, which could cause some nonsensical replies
   (like you're not already used to nonsensical replies, though...)

version 0.8.1:
 - "system" elements now attempt to intelligently convert between UNIX-style
   and Windows-style pathnames as appropriate.  For cross-platform compatibility,
   all AIML files should use UNIX-style paths inside their "system" elements.
 - Fixed crashes under Windows9X when a "system" element is executed when
   w9xpopen.exe is unavailable.
 - Re-piped most errors and warnings to go to stderr instead of stdout.
 - Fixed bug that would cause the the bot to stop responding to any input in a session
   if the "that" or "topic" strings were 100% whitespace (but still not empty).
 - Fixed bug that would cause multi-line "that" strings to become corrupted.  For
   example, "Hello there.\nNice to meet you" would become "HELLO THERENICE TO MEET
   YOU" when queried for that-matching.

version 0.8:
 - Removed support for non-standard "mode" attribute in "system" elements.
   It just wasn't worth breaking the AIML standard for.
 - Reworked persistent session support (I warned you!).  The old method involving
   Kernel.persistentSessions() has been removed.  Instead, there is a new
   Kernel.getSessionData() method which gives the bot author access to the session
   data.  You can store this data however you wish.  Session data can be restored
   later by repeated calls to Kernel.setPredicate().
 - Improved AIML parser error handling; instead of aborting the entire file, a
   parse error now only ignores the current category and forges ahead.  To check for
   parse errors, check the return value of AimlParser.getNumErrors() after parsing.

version 0.7:
 - Further improved AIML parsing; missing or invalid XML attributes are now
   detected at parse-time.  There's also a first stab at support for Forward
   Compatibility Mode: if the "version" attribute of an AIML tag is not 1.0.1,
   the parser is much more forgiving of unknown or missing XML tags and attributes.
 - Added "support" for the 'gossip' tag.  The specific behavior of this tag is
   totally undefined; currently, the PyAIML implementation treats it as a big
   no-op.  Its contents are ignored, and it returns the empty string (but at least
   it isn't flagged as a syntax error!) 
 - Oops; I've implemented 'person' as 'person2' and vice versa this whole time!
   Swapped them back; they should each behave correctly now.
 - A bit of code cleanup, with an emphasis on using proper XML/AIML terminology
   whenever possible.
 - Fixed some exception-masking in the 'condition' element processor, which could
   prevent AIML parse errors from being reported.
 - Added full support for the "bot" tag (previously only the 'bot name="name"'
   form was supported).  Bot predicates are set using the Kernel.setBotPredicate()
   function.  Note that Kernel.getBotName() and Kernel.setBotName() have been
   deprecated, and will disappear in a future release.

version 0.6.1:
 - Fixed undefined variable exception that was thrown whenever there was no
   match for the user's input.
 - Fixed an infinite recursion bug caused by processing two or more nested
   'srai' or 'sr' elements.

version 0.6
 - Completely rewrote the LearnHandler class (which handles all AIML parsing)
   to be much less forgiving of incorrect AIML.  Currently, any AIML errors
   outside of "template" elements should be caught and reported at load-time.
   AIML errors inside templates are still not detected until run-time.
 - Added support for atomic 'person' and 'person2' tags (they implicitly use
   'star' as their contents if none are provided).
 - Oops; Kernel.respond() was DEFINITELY not thread-safe.  Now it is, provided
   you're using Python's standard 'threading' module. If not, you'll have to
   provide your own mutual-exclusion system to ensure that only one thread
   is calling Kernel.respond() at a time.
 - Recursive tags ('srai' and 'sr') no longer add their intermediate results
   to the input and output history.
 - EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE: persistent sessions.  If enabled using
   Kernel.persistentSessions(True), session data will be written to disk
   after every response.  This lets session data be preserved when the
   Kernel is destroyed, at the expense of a small performance hit (all
   that extra disk I/O).  The semantics of this feature may change in future
   releases!
 - Added support for the "id" tag (it returns the session ID).
 - Added support for the "topic", "topicstar" and "thatstar" tags.
 - Commented up the test.py file.
 - Added a summary to the end of the Kernel.py self-test (since there are now
   too many tests to fit on screen).
 - Added support for multi-sentence input.  The user's input is split into
   individual sentences, each of which is treated as a completely separate
   piece of input.  I'm *pretty* sure this is the Right Way(tm).

version 0.5
 - The filename inside Learn tags can now contain wildcards.  Besides
   simplifying the loading of multiple files, this allows the possibility
   of loading AIML files that may not exist without crashing the
   interpreter.
 - Attempting to set the value of a predicate in a nonexistent session
   now automatically creates the session, instead of silently doing nothing.
 - "set" tags now output the new value of the variable, as well as assigning
   it.

version 0.4.1
 - Unknown AIML tags are handled in a more forgiving fashion.  If an
   unknown tag is encountered, instead of ignoring its contents entirely,
   the contents are processed and returned unaltered.
 - Added support for "bot name='name'" tags, both in patterns and in
   templates.  This also fixes a nasty infinite loop crash when a user
   says Hello to a bot. 

version 0.4
 - Added support for "star" and "sr" tags.
 - Considered adding support for the "secure" tag, but decided against it.
   see SUPPORTED_TAGS.txt for more information.

version 0.3
 - Cleaned up AIML processing code to remove some unnecessary
   special-cases in the interpretation algorithm.
 - Added support for "input" and "that" tags.

version 0.2
 - 50% speedup in Kernel.loadBrain() and Kernel.saveBrain().
 - The optional 'learnFiles' and 'commands' arguments to
   Kernel.bootstrap() can now be either strings or lists. This
   allows multiple files/commands to be loaded during
   initialization.
 - Added support for "person" and "person2" tags.
 - Added general word-substitution functionality.  This opens up
   the potential for localizing PyAIML into non-English languages.
   See DefaultSubs.py for more info.

version 0.1:
 - Initial release.
