Changes -- list of user visible changes -*- outline -*-
* Babble 0.07 -- 2004-04-25
** Babble::Cache made into a proper object
Babble::Cache was made into a proper object, it is not a global hash
with accessor methods anymore.
** Improved RSS parsing
The RSS DataSource was modified to not let the whole application die
when the underlying XML::Parser die()s. So-called item hooks were
also implemented, to be able to store custom data from the feed in
the Babble::Document object.
** Improved caching
Babble will only cache feeds that are known to be valid (ie,
parsable).
* Babble 0.06 -- 2004-04-12
** More forgiving parsing and data handling
Babble::DataSource::RSS was made a bit more robust (handles different
date formats, and <content:encoded>...</content:encoded> stuff), and
bin/babble was teached to correct some more common problems in RSS
feeds.
** Feed image support
Babble is now able to parse, generate and handle feed images, as seen
in RSS feeds. Useful when one would like to see a picture of article
authors near their article.
The planet, planet_gray and XML themes have support for displaying
these, as does the RSS output method.
** Babble::Theme::XML has a new format
Babble::Theme::XML has a new format: rss10, which outputs RSS 1.0
feeds. Intended to be used instead of Babble::Output:RSS, when one
wants more control over the content of the feed.
** Demise of Babble::Output::HTML
It was found that HTML::Template is not too useful with Babble, so
all the themes that were using it, were converted to Template
Toolkit, and Babble::Output::HTML was removed.
** Various layout fixes and improvements
A few glitches and bugs were fixed in the templates.
** Limiting support reimplemented
Moved most of the limiting support out from the templates. This means
that applications using Babble must do the limiting themselves, and
the templates will use the collection they pass back to them.
See bin/babble for an example on how to implement this.
** Fixed a bug which prevented Babble to be used when installed
Due to me testing Babble from the source tree, and not when it was
installed, Babble::Output::TTk did not pass the ABSOLUTE option to
template toolkit, resulting in run-time errors when trying to run
babble after a ./Build install. This is now fixed.
* Babble 0.05 -- 2004-04-03
** Improved limiting support
A different kind of limiting support was made accessible to the
Template Toolkit based templates: limiting by age. Items older than
a specified value will not be handled by the template.
** Improved caching
Babble is now able to cache parsed data (disabled by default,
though), which results in significantly faster processing, but
increases memory usage too.
Also, the Babble::Cache module can store the cache contents in
different formats now. The single new format is Storable, which is
not human readable, but much faster than Data::Dumper.
** Callback support while collecting feeds
It is now possible to run callback routines whenever a source is
about to collected and when collection ended. This gives one a way to
print status messages or the like.
** New, DBI based datasource
A new datasource module, Babble::DataSource::DBI was added to the
distribution. It can be used to collect feed data from any kind of
database DBI might have support for.
** New, Mail based datasource
A new datasource module, Babble::DataSource::Mail was added to the
distribution. It can be used to collect feed data from, say,
mailboxes. One can use this for setting up a system where mail
intended for blogging is saved in a separate mailbox, and this module
is used for processing it.
** Improved test suite
Many new tests were added to the test suite, to achieve even higher
codepath coverage (still not enough, but we're getting there).
** Example bin/babble frontend enhancements
The example `bin/babble' frontend was extended to understand
parameters that should be eval-ed before usage (these are prefixed
with a `&'), and to be able to read the configuration file from its
standard input.
* Babble 0.04 -- 2004-03-28
** Caching support
Modified Babble::Transport and added a Babble::cache method to
Babble::Utils for optional feed and item caching. This is a much more
efficient way than the datecache processor was. It can also save
considerable bandwidth.
** Limiting support
Implemented support for limiting the number of elements returned by
Babble::Document::Collection's search() and sort() methods.
** Improved test suite
The test suite received an additional file: t/pod.t, to test the
documentation for syntax correctness.
** Improved filtering support
One can now specify a custom comparsion function to be used for
filtering, searching. This makes one able to limit the items in an
aggregation to, say, items only a week old or younger.
* Babble 0.03 -- 2004-03-14
** Some internal restructuring.
Implemented a Babble::Transport module, for transparent location
access (currently only used by Babble::DataSource::RSS and
Babble::DataSource::OPML).
** Theme updates and modifications.
The FOAF and OPML formats from planet_ttk were moved to a separate
XML theme, planet_ttk got renamed to planet_grey and received some
layout updates.
** New and improved example script
There is a new and improved example script, that can be used to set
up Babbles with only minimal configuration and no coding. It does not
support all the bells and whistles of Babble, though.
** New, OPML data source
A new DataSource module, Babble::DataSource::OPML was added to the
distribution. It can parse OPML documents, and collect the RSS feeds
mentioned therein.
* Babble 0.02 -- 2004-03-09
** Lots of documentation updates.
Documentation was cleared up in many places, and was generally made
better.
** Internal restructuring.
The internal structure of objects was greatly simplified, resulting
in less memory usage and faster operation. Not to mention easier
maintainance.
** Date parsing fixes
The Babble::DataSource modules often failed to parse the dates they
encountered, this was fixed.
** New output method and theme
There is a new output method, Babble::Output::TTk, which uses the
Template Toolkit, and is the preferred output method as of now.
There is a highly customisable theme based on it,
Babble::Theme::planet_ttk. This one provides not only a HTML
template, but FOAF and OPML templates too.
** Test suite
The beginnings of a test suite is included with this release.
* Babble 0.01 -- 2004-03-07
Initial release.
# arch-tag: 6c29c03c-d34a-45ec-8078-1dd14c178b5d