ixa-pipe-tok

ixa-pipe-tok is a multilingual rule-based tokenizer and sentence segmenter. ixa-pipe-tok is part of IXA pipes, a set of NLP tools developed by the IXA NLP Group [http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/ixa-pipes]. Current version is 2.0.0.

Please go to [http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/ixa-pipes] for general information about the IXA pipes tools but also for official releases, including source code and binary packages for all the tools in the IXA pipes toolkit.

This document is intended to be the usage guide of ixa-pipe-tok. If you really need to clone and install this repository instead of using the releases provided in [http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/ixa-pipes], please scroll down to the end of the document for the installation instructions.

NOTICE!!: ixa-pipe-tok is now in Maven Central for easy access to its API.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Overview of ixa-pipe-tok
2. Usage of ixa-pipe-tok

• Tokenization

3. API via Maven Dependency
4. Git installation

OVERVIEW

This module provides Multilingual Sentence Segmentation and Tokenization for a number of languages, such as Basque, Dutch, German, English, French, Galician, Italian and Spanish. ixa-pipe-tok outputs tokenized and segmented text in three formats:

• NAF (default): NAF is used to represent tokenized text but also to as an interchange format between other ixa pipes tools (http://github.com/ixa-ehu). NAF is generated using Kaflib (http://github.com/ixa-ehu/kaflib).
• Oneline: tokenized text with one sentence per line and markers (*<P>*) for paragraphs, if that option is chosen.
• Conll: one token per line, two newlines per sentence and markers for paragraphs (*<P>*) and offsets, if that option is chosen.

ixa-pipe-tok also provides normalization functions to comply with annotation in corpora such as Penn Treebank for English and Ancora Corpus for Spanish, among others.

• multilingual treatment of apostrophes for Catalan, French and Italian styles (l' aquila, c' est, etc.) possibly applying to other languages with the same rules for splitting apostrophes.
• language-specific non-breaking exceptions for Basque, Dutch, German, English, French, Galician, Italian and Spanish.
• Normalization following several corpora conventions.
• paragraph tokenization.

CLI-USAGE

ixa-pipe-tok provides 3 basic functionalities:

1. tok: reads a plain text or a NAF document containing a raw element and outputs tokens by sentences.
2. server: starts a TCP service loading the model and required resources.
3. client: sends a NAF document to a running TCP server.

Each of these functionalities are accessible by adding (tok|server|client) as a subcommand to ixa-pipe-tok-1.8.4-exec.jar. Please read below and check the -help parameter. For example:

java -jar target/ixa-pipe-tok-$version-exec.jar tok -help

Tokenizing

If you are in hurry, Download or create a plain text file and use it like this:

cat guardian.txt | java -jar target/ixa-pipe-tok-$version-exec.jar tok -l en

If you want to know more, please follow reading.

ixa-pipe-tok reads NAF documents (with raw element) or plain text files via standard input and outputs NAF through standard output. The NAF format specification is here:

(http://wordpress.let.vupr.nl/naf/)

There are several options to tokenize with ixa-pipe-tok:

• lang: choose language to create the lang attribute in KAF header.
• normalize: choose normalization method (see Normalizer class).
• nokaf: do not output NAF format.
• hardParagraph: do not detect spurious paragraphs.
• outputFormat: if --nokaf is used, choose between oneline or conll format output.
  • If -o conll is chosen, it is possible to choose whether to print offset information (--offsets) or not.
• notok: take an already tokenized text as input and create a KAFDocument.
• noseg: tokenize without sentence segmenting.
• inputkaf: take a NAF document as input instead of plain text file.
• kafversion: specify the NAF version as parameter

Example:

cat guardian.txt | java -jar target/ixa-pipe-tok-$version-exec.jar tok -l en

API

The easiest way to use ixa-pipe-tok programatically is via Apache Maven. Add this dependency to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>eus.ixa</groupId>
    <artifactId>ixa-pipe-tok</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.0</version>
</dependency>

JAVADOC

The javadoc of the module is located here:

ixa-pipe-tok/target/ixa-pipe-tok-$version-javadoc.jar

Module contents

The contents of the module are the following:

+ formatter.xml           Apache OpenNLP code formatter for Eclipse SDK
+ pom.xml                 maven pom file which deals with everything related to compilation and execution of the module
+ src/                    java source code of the module and required resources
+ Furthermore, the installation process, as described in the README.md, will generate another directory:
target/                 it contains binary executable and other directories

INSTALLATION

Installing the ixa-pipe-tok requires the following steps:

If you already have installed in your machine the Java 1.8+ and MAVEN 3, please go to step 3 directly. Otherwise, follow these steps:

1. Install JDK 1.8

If you do not install JDK 1.8+ in a default location, you will probably need to configure the PATH in .bashrc or .bash_profile:

export JAVA_HOME=$pwd/java8
export PATH=${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

Replacing $pwd with the full path given by typing the pwd inside the java directory.

If you use tcsh you will need to specify it in your .login as follows:

setenv JAVA_HOME $pwd/java8
setenv PATH ${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

If you re-login into your shell and run the command

java -version

You should now see that your JDK is 1.8+

2. Install MAVEN 3

Download MAVEN 3.3.9+ and untar it. Now you need to configure the PATH. For Bash Shell:

export MAVEN_HOME=$pwd/apache-maven-3.3.9
export PATH=${MAVEN_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

Replacing $pwd with the full path given by typing the pwd inside the apache maven directory.

For tcsh shell:

setenv MAVEN3_HOME $pwd/apache-maven-3.3.9
setenv PATH ${MAVEN3}/bin:{PATH}

If you re-login into your shell and run the command

mvn -version

You should see reference to the MAVEN version you have just installed plus the JDK 8 that is using.

3. Get module source code

If you must get the module source code from here do this:

git clone https://github.com/ixa-ehu/ixa-pipe-tok

4. Compile

cd ixa-pipe-tok
mvn clean package

This step will create a directory called target/ which contains various directories and files. Most importantly, there you will find the module executable:

ixa-pipe-tok-$version-exec.jar

This executable contains every dependency the module needs, so it is completely portable as long as you have a JVM 1.8 or newer installed.

To install the module in the local maven repository, usually located in ~/.m2/, execute:

mvn clean install

Contact information

Rodrigo Agerri
IXA NLP Group
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
E-20018 Donostia-San Sebastián
[email protected]