Background

This page provides (emerging) information on support in the LOGON tree for the Answer Constraint Engine (ACE). As of mid-2013, binaries for parsing-generating and treebanking with ACE are included with the LOGON tree, albeit (currently) only for 64-bit environments. These binaries are maintained by the ACE developer, WoodleyPackard.

Parsing

The LOGON Tree does not include pre-compiled grammar binaries for ACE, thus as a first-time, preparatory step, one needs to invoke the ACE grammar compiler, e.g. (using the answer wrapper script to ACE, available only in the LOGON environment):

  answer --erg --compile

Once the above has completed (successfully), a command like the following will invoke the ACE parser in a mode that will prepare profiles for full-forest treebanking:

  $LOGONROOT/parse --binary --erg+tnt/ace --protocol 2 --best 1 --limit 0 --count 8 cb

Full-Forest Treebanking

The answer wrapper script in the LOGON tree currently does not support the full range of standard command-line options to activate grammars (that come with the LOGON distribution), but only ‘–erg’ and ‘–terg’, for the release and trunk versions of the ERG, respectively.

To invoke full-forest treebanking, in the [incr tsdb()] podium, select ‘Trees|Switches|External Treebanking Tool’. While this toggle is in effect, the ‘Trees|Annotate’ and ‘Trees|Update’ commands will invoke the external ACE Full-Forest Treebanker. To give an illusion of tight integration, the following [incr tsdb()] parameters will have an effect on the external treebanking tool: (a) selection of a ‘working set’ of items, through a condition on profile entries (e.g. as determined through ‘Options|TSQL Condition’ or ‘Options|New Condition’); (b) the selection of a ‘gold’ profile (by clicking the middle mouse button in the [incr tsdb()] podium), as the source for update information; and (c) the toggle for batch vs. interactive updates (‘Trees|Switches|Automatic Update’).

Furthermore, the invocation of the Answer treebanker application can be customized through ‘Trees|Variables|Treebanking Tool’ or setting the [incr tsdb()] variable *redwoods-treebanker-application* in the per-user ‘.tsdbrc’. The default value, for the time being, is “answer –annotate –terg”.

In principle, it should work to follow the ‘common’ release procedure for treebank creation, i.e. first call for an automatic update immediately following the parsing, by adding the option ‘–update/external’ to the ‘parse’ command line. This functionality remains to be validated, though.

Going Back to Derivation-Based Profiles

Known Issues

Use of the Answer treebanking tool for updates from an existing ‘gold’ profile presupposes prior normalization of the ‘gold’ profile, i.e. the treebanker will not honor in-profile versioning (through the ‘t-version’ field in the various relations used to record annotations).

During automated updates, the treebanking tool will always explicitly flag items that remain unannotated, i.e. for which the update was not successful. The [incr tsdb()] flag ‘Trees|Switches|Update Flag Failures’ (on by default) is currently not communicated to the external treebanking tool).

The <Control-G> or <Control-C> key bindings in the [incr tsdb()] podium are not yet enabled during external treebanking. Hence, it is vital to exit from the external treebanking tool by clicking on Exit in its browser window (or otherwise making it terminate, e.g. through a shell command like ‘killall fftb’) to regain control in the [incr tsdb()] podium.

Last update: 2016-05-24 by StephanOepen [edit]