COGENT: Major Features of Successive Versions

This page lists the major new features in various versions of COGENT. Users of older versions may review the features that have been added since they downloaded COGENT and assess whether its time to upgrade.

Principal features added during development of Version 2.3:

  1. COGENT is now distributed under the GNU Public License (version 2). This means that the source code is now in the public domain (subject to the terms and conditions of the GPL license).
  2. COGENT now includes a facility to download models direct from the archive of at the COGENT website into COGENT.
  3. Box and arrow diagrams can now be animated: Little moving beads on box/arrow diagrams are used to show message passing while a model is running.
  4. Positioning the cursor over a node on the Digrammatic History panel now pops up a temporary window displaying useful facts about the model (name, creation date, last edit date, last run date).
  5. All functions related to the Diagrammatic History panel are now accessible by selecting a node and then selecting the relevant function from a set of fixed menus at the top of the panel. This should make things easier for uses without 2 button mouses. Equivalent features have been added to the Model List panel.
  6. The contents of description windows can now be printed, independently of other aspects of a project or model.
  7. Various augmentations to the box hierarchy, including the addition of hierarchically structured knowledge bases, properties to specify autoscaling for all graph types, and extended capabilities of socket boxes.

Principal features added during development of Version 2.2:

  1. Dependencies between properties are now reflected on properties panels. For example, if a buffer's "Limited Capacity" property is set to false, then the capacity related properties "Capacity" and "On Excess" will be greyed out, indicating that they are irrelevant. (Added in Version 2.2 #3.)
  2. Property promotion/demotion has been replaced a less clumsy mechanism of property freezing/thawing. (Added in Version 2.2 #2.)
  3. The find/replace facilities and various model syntax checking functions have been greatly enhanced. (Improvements in each release of Version 2.2.)
  4. A "Model List" view has been added to the Research Programme Manager. This displays similar information to the Diagrammatic History view, but shows it in text form. (Added in Version 2.2 #0.)
  5. COGENT's global clipboard can now be viewed and edited (Added in Version 2.2 #0.)
  6. New box types have been added: "associative network" (added in Version 2.2 #2) and "socket" (added in Version 2.2 #0).

Principal features added during development of Version 2.1:

  1. "Display rules" may now be associated with a propositional buffer. These allow the user to program an alternative graphical representation for propositional buffer contents. (Added in Version 2.1 b1.)
  2. The archiving facilities have been completely over-hauled with the addition of an all-new archive browser. (Added in Version 2.1 b1.)
  3. A cut/paste facility has been added to the Research Programme Manager. (Added in Version 2.1.)
  4. The student/professional distinction has been replaced with a single edition functioning in unregistered/registered modes. (Added in Version 2.1 b4.)
  5. OOS error reporting has been greatly improved. (Enhancements in Version 2.1 b1 and Version 2.1 b2.)

More detailed development histories:

Version 2.3 #0

  1. Positioning the cursor over a node on the Digrammatic History panel now pops up a temporary window displaying useful facts about the model (name, creation date, last edit date, last run date).
  2. Box and arrow diagrams can now be animated!
  3. All functions related to the Diagrammatic History panel are now accessible by selecting a node and then selecting the relevant function from a set of fixed menus at the top of the panel. Analogous facilities are provided on the Model List panel. This should make life easier for uses without 2 button mouses.
  4. Graphical buffers and data sinks can now be configured to automatically scale their X and Y axes according to the values of the data represented on the graph.
  5. The capabilities of socket boxes have been extended by providing access to identifiers for open connections.

Version 2.2 #3

  1. Dependencies between properties are now reflected on properties panels. For example, if a buffer's "Limited Capacity" property is set to false, then the capacity related properties "Capacity" and "On Excess" will be greyed out, indicating that they are irrelevant.
  2. The reporting of runtime errors from Prolog has been improved. Where possible, the error report now includes the name of the box in which the error occured.
  3. An option has been added to allow showing/hiding of the (previously invisible) grid used to position boxes on box and arrow diagrams.
  4. A grid is now also used for placement of models on the Diagrammatic History view.
  5. A preference has been added to allow printing with a fixed width font -- useful when printing text files with columns that should line up.

Version 2.2 #2

  1. Property promotion/demotion has been replaced with a less clumsy mechanism of property freezing/thawing.
  2. A popup notebook has been added that gives unified access to find and replace, as well as functions for checking diagram connectivity, checking for singleton variables, and listing terms used in a box.
  3. The replace function has been extended to allow selective replace (i.e., find next/replace it, and so on).
  4. A new box type -- "associative network" -- has been added.
  5. The set of built-in conditions has been extended to include conditions for vector arithmetic.

Version 2.2 #1

  1. A facility to search elements, rules, condition definitions etc. for "singleton variables" has been added.
  2. The placement of the box class palette on diagram and data windows has been generalised to allow left/right as well as top/bottom placement.

Version 2.2 #0

  1. A "Model List" view has been added to the Research Programme Manager. This displays similar information to the Diagrammatic History view, but shows it in text form.
  2. Viewing/editing facilities have been added for COGENT's global clipboard. It is now possible to examine COGENT's clipboard and manipulate its contents.
  3. The display of weight matrix information for feed-forward network boxes and activation information in interactive activation network boxes has been improved.
  4. COGENT on Mac OS X is now supported.
  5. A new box type -- "socket" -- has been added. Socket boxes allow interfacing of COGENT with other systems through TCP/IP.
  6. Buffers now have an additional property: "Grounded". If this Boolean property is set then ungrounded elements can not be added to the buffer.

Version 2.1

  1. A cut/paste facility has been added to the Research Programme Manager. It is now possible to cut a model from one research programme and paste it into another.
  2. Numerous major changes have been made to the experiment scripting interface, including allowing the import of text scripts, allowing embedded commands within scripts, and automatic conversion of calls to subscripts to appropriate "call" commands.

Version 2.1 b4

  1. The student/professional distinction has been replaced with a single edition functioning in unregistered/registered modes.
  2. Accelerator keys have been added for research programme management and element editing functions.

Version 2.1 b3

  1. The import function has been enhanced: Imported items can now be prepended or appended to existing items.

Version 2.1 b2

  1. OOS error reporting has been enhanced: multi-line errors are now reported with multiple warning messages.

Version 2.1 b1

  1. "Display rules" may now be associated with a propositional buffer. These allow the user to program an alternative graphical representation for propositional buffer contents.
  2. The archiving facilities have been completely over-hauled with the addition of an all-new archive/extraction interface. Old-style archives generated by WinCOGENT version 1 can also be extracted.
  3. OOS errors are now signalled by a new pop-up window.
  4. Nodes on the Diagrammatic History window can now be repositioned and "reparented", effectively allow history diagrams to be edited. (Profession edition only.)
  5. The installation procedure has been completely revised to allow smoother installation on all platforms.
  6. The Windows version now uses the Windows Registry for storing preferences.
  7. Table buffers and sinks can now be configured to automatically sort their contents (via the new Sort property).
  8. A handful of new built-in conditions have been added (select/3, cartesian_polar/3, chi_sq/3, gensym/2).
  9. Symbols for the term comparison operations (e.g., "\==") have been replaced with English glosses (so "\==" now appears as "is distinct from", and "=" now appears as "unifies with").

Version 2 b2

  1. Operators are now read by COGENT and OOS from the file operators.pl in the OOS library directory. Unscrupulous users may take advantage of this to define their own operators.
  2. If a condition in a rule/defined condition is changed (via the Change Condition menu) to a condition with the same functor, the arguments will now be preserved were possible.
  3. a "Variables" view has been added to the OOS Script window. This shows values of OOS variables.
  4. Added randomise, while/do, if/then/else and for/do constructs for scripts, as well as a step operator.

Version 2 b1

This is an entirely new version of COGENT which unifies the previous Version 1 series of Windows and UNIX of COGENT. Enhancements are too numerous to mention. It is stronly recommended that users of Version 1 upgrade.