v0.3.0 — Docxodus v7.0.0 and the docxdiff comparison engine

Upgrades the vendored Docxodus engine from v5.4.2 to v7.0.0 and exposes its new comparison-engine selector.

New: choose a comparison engine

DocxodusEngine now accepts an engine= keyword argument. wmlcomparer remains the default, so existing code is unaffected.

from python_redlines import DocxodusEngine

engine = DocxodusEngine()
engine.run_redline("Reviewer", original, modified)                     # wmlcomparer (default)
engine.run_redline("Reviewer", original, modified, engine="docxdiff")  # new IR engine

docxdiff is Docxodus's structure-aware IR diff engine. It produces finer-grained markup and will report a different revision count than wmlcomparer for the same pair of documents — different algorithms, both correct.

Settings docxdiff does not support

docxdiff does not implement detail_threshold, simplify_move_markup, or detect_format_changes. The underlying CLI accepts and silently ignores them, so passing any of the three alongside engine="docxdiff" now raises ValueError instead of quietly producing untuned output.

It does honour detect_moves, case_insensitive, conflate_spaces, move_similarity_threshold, move_minimum_word_count, and date_time.

Move markup differs between the two: docxdiff renders moves natively and rejects simplify_move_markup, so the Word-compatibility mitigation documented for wmlcomparer is unavailable there. If you need moves lowered to plain del/ins, use engine="wmlcomparer" with simplify_move_markup=True.

Building from source now requires the .NET 10 SDK

Docxodus v7.0.0 targets net10.0. A .NET 8 SDK can no longer build the Docxodus engine. The Open-XML-PowerTools engine still targets net8.0, and the .NET 10 SDK builds both, so only one SDK is needed.

apt install dotnet-sdk-10.0
# or: curl -sSL https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh | bash -s -- --channel 10.0

This affects contributors only. Installing from PyPI ships prebuilt binaries; end users never compile anything and need no .NET SDK.

Install

pip install python-redlines[docxodus]        # Docxodus engine (wmlcomparer + docxdiff)
pip install python-redlines[ooxmlpowertools] # Open-XML-PowerTools engine
pip install python-redlines[all]

Full changelog: v0.2.1...v0.3.0

v0.2.1

Patch release with documentation and typing fixes.

Changes

• docs/quickstart.md rewritten to lead with the recommended DocxodusEngine (was previously the legacy engine), with a new section demonstrating Docxodus-only comparison kwargs and a callout that XmlPowerToolsEngine silently ignores them. (#23)
• run_redline argument type widened from Union[bytes, Path] to Union[str, bytes, Path] to match documented usage — passing plain str paths now matches the annotation. No runtime behavior change. (#23)

Install

pip install --upgrade python-redlines[docxodus]

v0.2.0

First release of the three-package layout.

Install

pip install python-redlines[docxodus]          # default engine (recommended)
pip install python-redlines[ooxmlpowertools]   # legacy engine
pip install python-redlines[all]               # both engines

Prebuilt wheels for Linux, macOS, and Windows (x64 and arm64). No .NET SDK required to install or use.

What's new

• Restructured into three PyPI packages: python-redlines (pure-Python core), python-redlines-docxodus (default engine binary), python-redlines-ooxmlpowertools (legacy engine binary). Engines are optional extras.
• New default engine — DocxodusEngine: modernized .NET 8 fork of Open-XML-PowerTools with move detection, format-change detection, LCS-based table row matching, and active maintenance.
• Comparison settings: DocxodusEngine.run_redline() accepts kwargs for detect_moves, simplify_move_markup, detail_threshold, case_insensitive, move_similarity_threshold, move_minimum_word_count, detect_format_changes, conflate_spaces, and date_time.
• Helpful error on missing engine: instantiating an engine without its companion package raises EngineNotInstalledError with the exact pip install command.
• Release pipeline: GitHub Actions builds per-platform wheels and publishes to PyPI via Trusted Publishing (OIDC).

Backwards compatibility

XmlPowerToolsEngine remains available unchanged for existing users. Both engines share the same run_redline(author, original_bytes, modified_bytes) API.

v0.0.5 - Add ARM Support

What's Changed

• Add ARM support by @ross-mcnairn-dev in #9

New Contributors

• @ross-mcnairn-dev made their first contribution in #9

Full Changelog: v0.0.4...v0.0.5

v0.0.4 - Release Binaries via PyPi Latest

What's Changed

• Fix binary extraction flow by @rishabh-sagar-20 in #7
• Improve Build and Dist Infrastructure by @JSv4 in #6

New Contributors

• @rishabh-sagar-20 made their first contribution in #7

Full Changelog: v0.0.3...v0.0.4

v0.0.3 - Update Docs and Add OSX Build

Updated docs and added OSX build.

v0.0.2 - Fix Docs

Fixed typos in docs

v0.0.1 - Initial Release

Initial release of our Python library to run docx redlines. As discussed extensively in the README, it currently is a simple wrapper of a C# class - WMLComparer, which is distributed as part of Open-XML-PowerTools. We would like to build a pure Python version as well, but this is meant to provide basic redlining capabilities to the Python ecosystem ASAP. Contributions are welcome.