add manifest and small doc updates
Apply changes suggested by @lukasgraf with small modifications, closes #1.

Python 2.5 compatibility isn't something I'm interested in anymore and the
with statement is much nicer than having to wrap the `open` call in a
try/finally to make sure the `close` is always called, even if an excpetion
occurred during the write call.
add and wire up a changelog
fill in changelog and bump version number for a feature release
Declare Python 3.4 compatibility.
add some ignores