Cognition implements a number of proposed extensions to existing Microformats.
The following additional properties are supported, taken from the vCard 4.0 draft:
The following additional organisation sub-properties are supported:
If there is only one organisation listed as part of an hCard, then organisation-name and other organisation sub-properties may be used without an org wrapper element.
The hCard specification offers a method for determining whether an hCard refers to an individual or an organisation. Cognition extends this to allow hCards to also refer to organisation units (e.g. departments, working groups) and any address properties (buildings, cities, regions, countries, etc). This is done by setting the "fn" property identically to the other property. e.g.
<div class="hcard">
<a class="org url" href="http://la.ctu.gov.invalid">
<span class="organization-name">Counter-Terrorist Unit</span>:
<span class="organization-unit fn">Los Angeles Division</span>
</a>
</div>
The "kind" property is automatically set (unless a "kind" has been specified explicitly); in the case above it is set to "group".
| Property equal to FN | Inferred KIND |
|---|---|
| organization-name | org |
| organization-unit | group |
| post-office-box | x-post-office-box |
| extended-address | x-extended-address |
| street-address | x-street-address |
| locality | x-locality |
| region | x-region |
| postal-code | x-postal-code |
| country-name | x-country-name |
Otherwise, "kind" is assumed to be "individual".
The hCalendar specification is hopelessly incomplete. As a result, I have drafted hCalendar 1.1, and Cognition more-or-less supports that.
The type property is parsed, even when an address is given outside an hCard.
An address may contain embedded geo microformats.
See also: geo.
If a geo is missing its latitude or longitude, then the raw XML string for the entire element is searched for the following regular expression which represents two semicolon/comma-delimited decimal numbers:
/ \s* (\-?[0-9\.]+) \s* [\;\,] \s* (\-?[0-9\.]+) \s* /x
The first number is taken to be the latitude; the second, the longitude. This will allow the parsing of constructs like:
<a class="geo" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=50.8730,0.0005">home</a>The following additional optional properties are supported:
Due to accessibility problems with the ABBR pattern, an alternative syntax is also supported: the title attribute may be used on non-ABBR elements, but only if the value is prefixed with the string "data:". Human-readable information may be included in the title, before the "data:" prefix. The data prefix and value following it may be wrapped in brackets. For example, the following are considered equivalent:
<span class="foo">XXXX</span><abbr class="foo" title="XXXX">X</abbr><span class="foo" title="data:XXXX">X</span><span class="foo" title="Foo is X data:XXXX">X</span><span class="foo" title="Foo is X [data:XXXX]">X</span>Brackets, braces and parentheses are considered bracketing characters. Left and right do not have to match.
Experimental support is also included for the data-* class
pattern, but to take advantage of it, publishers must include
the profile URI.
The proposed non-verbose class-based solution is supported in addition to the standard method.
The datetime design pattern specifies two profiles (subsets) of ISO8601 datetime format for use in microformats. Cognition additionally supports other ISO8601 datetimes, as parsed by the DateTime::Format::ISO8601 Perl module.
As a last ditch attempt, datetimes that cannot be parsed as above are attempted to be parsed as natural language dates using DateTime::Format::Natural. Ambiguous dates are assumed to be in the future (e.g. does "Sunday" refer to last Sunday or next Sunday?) and specified in UTC. Authors should not rely on natural language parsing, as it is not particularly predictable.
The author of Cognition is following the MFO effort with interest. Currently Cognition implements this algorithm to deal with nested and embedded microformats:
rel, rev and class
attributes attached to elements within nested microformats
to the empty string.Licences are found as specified. The term "license" is also identified using namespace-prefixed rel values within the DC (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Terms) and CC (Creative Commons) namespaces. For example:
<a href="/licence.html" rel="CC:license">Licence</a>The namespace must have been predeclared-using an xmlns:FOO attribute or RFC 2731. (Though Cognition pre-declares the "DC" namespace.)
The rel-tag specification should be fully supported as specified.
As an alternative to rel="tag", Cognition also supports
class="tag". While rel values are defined as case-insensitive
by the HTML 4.01 spec, classes are not, so lower-case must be used.
class="tag" tags are parsed differently from
rel="tag" tags, in that the link text (subject to the abbr pattern and value excerpting) is used instead
of the final URL component, in order to accomodate alternative
URL formats. When both rel="tag" and
class="tag" are found on the same element, then the element
is parsed using standard rel-tag rules. As with rel="tag",
class="tag" must only be used on <a> and
<area> elements.
The following examples are all parsed as the tag "Example":
<a rel="tag" href="/tag/Example">NotThis</a><a class="tag" href="/tag/NotThis">Example</a><a class="tag" rel="tag" href="/tag/Example">NotThis</a><a class="tag" href="/tag/NotThis">NotThis <span class="value">Example</span></a>hAtom is mostly implemented as per the hAtom 0.1 spec. In addition, there is support for zero or more rel-enclosure links within each hEntry, which is predicted to appear in the hAtom 0.2 spec. The nearest-in-parent algorithm for discovering authors for authorless entries is not fully implemented as it is predicted that this algorithm will be simplified for hAtom 0.2. Instead, the following algorithm is implemented:
hSlice is supported as a synonym for hEntry.
XFN is supported as per the spec and parsed into RDF using the guidelines that I published on the microformats wiki. This includes a procedure for working out the “representative hCard” for the page being parsed. The following rules are followed to determine the hCard:
rel="me" specified on
a link with class="url";class="url" link
back to the page being parsed;The rev attribute is properly supported, and inverse
and symmetric relationships are fully understood. For example, if using
rev="child", Cognition knows that this is the same as
rel="parent".
Cognition has specific support for XFN 1.0 (i.e. it will ignore the new properties defined in XFN 1.1), but only if you explicitly include the XFN 1.0 profile URI in your document head. Cognition includes support for the XHTML Enemies Network 1.0 (XEN), but again, only if you include the profile URI.
Support for xFolk
entries was introduced in Cognition 0.1-α8; hReview followed in
0.1-α9. As of 0.1-α10, the parsers for both have been united:
xFolk is treated as funny-looking hReview. As a consequence, xFolk
entries may include additional classes from hReview, such as
dtreviewed and reviewer.
Cognition 0.1-α11 includes experimental support for the species
microformat using the root class name biota. As some
taxonomic ranks are used differently by botanists and zoologists, you
may use the additional class names botany and
zoology to resolve any ambiguities. For example,
<i class="biota zoology">...</i>.
Within the root element, the following singular properties are allowed
for marking up the various taxonomic ranks. (If you're using a CSS-capable
browser, you should see that core terms are in bold, zoology-only terms
in red, and biology-only in green.) If the rank you wanted is not on the
list, then use the generic (plural) class="rank" instead.
aberrationaggregateauthoritybiovarbranchbreedclassclaudiuscohortcomplexconvarietycultivarcultivar-groupdivisiondomainempirefalanxfamilyfamily-groupformgenusgenus-groupgigaordergradegrandordergroupgroup-of-breedshybridhyperorderinfraclassinfradomaininfrafamilyinfraforminfragenusinfrakingdominfralegioninfraorderinfraphyluminfrasectioninfraseriesinfraspeciesinfratribeinfravarietyinterkingdomkingdomkleptonlegionlususmagnordermegaordermicrospeciesmidkingdommidphylummirordernationorderparvclassparvorderpathovarphylumpopulationsectionsection-of-breedsseriesserogroupserovarspecies (a.k.a. specific)species-groupspecies-subgroupstrainsubclasssubcohortsubdivisionsubdomainsubfamilysubfamily-groupsubformsubgenussubgroupsubkingdomsublegionsubordersubphylumsubsectionsubseriessubspeciessubtribesubvarietysuperclasssupercohortsuperdivisionsuperdomainsuperfamilysuperformsupergenussuperkingdomsuperlegionsuperordersuperphylumsupersectionsuperseriessuperspeciessupertribesupervarietysuprakingdomsupraphylumsynkleptontribevarietyFurther plural classes binomial and trinomial
are supported for marking up the binomial or trinomial name, and
common-name (a.k.a. vernacular,
cname) for the common name of a species. The plural class
authority is supported for marking up the classification
authority.
For convenience, as many of these properties use such generic names
(class, form, section, etc) you
may prefix any of these classes with taxo or
taxo-. For example, instead of class="tribe"
you could equivalently use class="taxotribe" or
class="taxo-tribe". This is not a
namespacing mechanism, but a simple method for you to avoid clashes
with class names.
Lastly, as an optimisation, if none of the above properties are found within the root element, then the entire string contents of the root element are taken to be a binomial/trinomial name.
Two examples of species parsed by Cognition follow:
<span class="biota" lang="zxx">Homo sapiens</span>
<p class="biota zoology" lang="en">
He is a <span class="common-name">human</span>, or as they say
in Basque, a <span lang="eu" class="common-name">Gizakia</span>.
What scientists would classify as a
<i class="trinomial" lang="zxx">
<span class="binomial">
<span class="genus">Homo</span>
<span class="species">sapiens</span>
</span>
<span class="subspecies">sapiens</span>
</i>,
a member of the <span class="family" lang="zxx">hominidae</span> family
of <span lang="zxx" class="taxo-order">primates</span>.
</p>
[Note the use of lang="zxx" (language code for "no
linguistic content") rather than lang="la" (language code
for Latin). Despite the fact that these scientific terms are often called
"Latin names", in reality they are often derived from a mixture of Latin,
Greek, English and other sources — they are not usually even
close to the Latin terms for the forms of life described.
lang="zxx" is a better way of marking up these terms and
also indicates that a translation of the terms should not be attempted.]
Cognition applies special meaning to instances of the species microformat found nested within hCard and hCalendar events. It is strongly suggested that for either of these purposes, you should supply at least one of these properties (which are normally optional):
binomialtrinomialcommon-name (or one of its aliases)genus and species (or its alias specific), from which a binomial can be impliedWhen class="biota" is found nested inside an hCard, then
it is implied that the person/thing described by the hCard is a member
of the species.
When class="biota attendee" is found within an hCalendar
event, at least one member of the species described is taken to have been
present at the event. Combined with location/geo
and dtstart this is roughly equivalent to a "sighting" of
the species.
The above combination with attendee may cause problems
with some naive parsers, especially ones with no support for the
species microformat. Because of this, an alternative syntax is supported
to avoid triggering bugs: class="biota x-sighting-of"
Additionally, to specify a sighting of a species
class="vcard attendee" may be used in conjunction with the
hCard nesting described above to record additional information such as the
name or date of birth of the creature sighted. For example:
<p class="vevent">
<abbr class="dtstart" title="20080706">Yesterday</abbr> I saw a
<span class="attendee vcard">
<span class="biota"><span class="common-name">goat</span></span>
called <span class="fn">Steve</span>
</span>
</p>
Example iCalendar output:
BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20080706T000000Z X-SIGHTING-OF:goat ATTENDEE;CN=Steve;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;VALUE=TEXT:Steve END:VEVENTToby Inkster