[uf-discuss] Cognition 0.1-alpha14 released!

[Toby A Inkster]

It's been almost four months since alpha12, and there have been so  
many improvements that I decided to bump the version to alpha14. The  
ChangeLog has a full list of improvements, but here is an abbreviated  
list that the microformats crowd might be interested in:

* Cognition has had some microformat validation functions buried away  
for a few versions, but these weren't exposed in any interface. Now,  
you can see microformat errors and warnings using any of the RDF-ish  
output formats. (Hopefully soon I'll create a better interface for  
these, so that it can be used as a microformat validator.)

* Support for hRecipe. This microformat is still in draft form and  
changes regularly. Details of Cognition's support can be found here:  
<http://buzzword.org.uk/cognition/uf-plus.html#hrecipe>. I will  
continue to track the hRecipe spec and change Cognition as hRecipe  
changes.

* hAudio uses "fn" for the title of the work instead of "title".  
("title" is still supported for backwards compatibility for the next  
few versions. When both are present, "fn" wins.)

* When converting microformats to RDF, no longer "squatting" on as  
many namespaces.

* Support for approximate datetimes. When parsing a datetime, use  
class="approx" either on the property itself, or a descendent element  
- e.g. <span class="approx bday">1665</span> or <span  
class="bday"><span class="approx">ca.</span> <span  
class="value">1665</span></span>. This is useful for, say, marking up  
historical events in hCalendar.

* Better support for the <pre> element when extracting strings:  
whitespace will be preserved.

* Integrated SocialGraph::NodeMapper Perl module. This allows  
Cognition to pick up extra information about people. Say, for example  
you have an XFN link <a rel="met" href="http:// 
example.livejournal.com">Example</a>, then Cognition will  
automatically figure out that the person's profile URI is <http:// 
example.livejournal.com/profile>.

* An experimental implementation of <http://microformats.org/wiki/ 
json>. See, for example, <http://srv.buzzword.org.uk/uf-json/ 
tantek.com/>.

* For Mac OS X users, there are a collection of NetNewsWire scripts  
for parsing hCard, hCalendar and hAudio in feeds.

The Cognition homepage, where it can be downloaded or tried online,  
is <http://buzzword.org.uk/cognition/>.

Also, I've started a project on Google Code for issue tracking and a  
subversion repository:
<http://code.google.com/p/cognition-parser/>.

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail at tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>