Clarifying when the Cas Editor needs the special nature, and when it needs the Corpus Explorer
The Cas Editor seems to be enabled by two different things in Eclipse. One is the Corpus Explorer view, which among other things, enables certain right-click menu items. The other is the natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature, although I'm not sure what it enables. To help users get started, I think the tooling chapter for the Cas Editor should say to either add the natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature to an existing project and / or switch to the Corpus Explorer view for that project, and / or create a new project using the wizard for a Cas Editor project. Do all three approaches work? I see there is a method in the class NlpProject called addNLPNature which adds this nature to a project - is there a way to invoke this from the Eclipse menus to do this for an existing project? If not, perhaps we could make use of the existing menu for PEARs which adds a menu pick called add UIMA nature and make it have sub-menus - one for the CasEditor, and one for the PEAR. -Marshall
Aligning the Cas Editor nature name
Should the nature for enabling the Cas Editor, natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature be better specified as org.apache.uima.CasEditor? Here's my thinking: UIMA in general is used for unstructured information - which may be text / language related, or may be other kinds of things, such as image data, audio recordings, etc., not related to NLP - Natural Language Processing. The Cas Editor (I think) is able to look at and edit CASes that may have nothing to do with Natural Language Processing (is this right?). -Marshall
Re: Cas Editor Eclipse naming
Marshall Schor wrote: I was testing the Cas Editor plugin, as a new naive user. There is nothing in the documentation that says to create one or more new projects, of a special type, for use by the Cas Editor - so I was trying to use a plain Java project, and of course, nothing was working. Part of the problem is that the label for the Cas Editor things in Eclipse is NLP. I did not recognize or associate that with either UIMA or the Cas Editor. (So, for instance, if you say in Eclipse, menu - file - new - other you get a pick list with lots of things, including one labeled NLP. Same with menu - window - show view - other same NLP entry.) I think we should rename this categorization tag to something that uses the words Uima, and CasEditor - maybe it should be a 2 level categorization, the top one being UIMA (which already exists, and is used by the Component Descriptor Editor), and a then CasEditor. WDYT? (What do you think)? You are right Marshall, they should be renamed to something which is appropriate now, the naming is a left over from the first days of the Cas Editor. The reason they were not renamed yet for the 2.3.0 release is that we should start a bigger refactoring effort to remove the project model from the Cas Editor plugin and create a new plugin based on it which helps users developing UIMA applications. A while back we decided to do this after the 2.3.0 release. Changing the names is not a big deal, but we should take into account that they might be changed again for the release after 2.3.0. +1 for the naming you suggested. Jörn
Re: Aligning the Cas Editor nature name
Marshall Schor wrote: Should the nature for enabling the Cas Editor, natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature be better specified as org.apache.uima.CasEditor? That would break backward compatibility and since I planned to completely refactor/rewrite the project model code I would prefer to rename it then after the 2.3.0 release. Here's my thinking: UIMA in general is used for unstructured information - which may be text / language related, or may be other kinds of things, such as image data, audio recordings, etc., not related to NLP - Natural Language Processing. The Cas Editor (I think) is able to look at and edit CASes that may have nothing to do with Natural Language Processing (is this right?). Yes, I planned to add support for other SOFA types than plain/text e.g. for images. Image support together with multi SOFA support could be used to inspect/display a CAS which contains a scanned page as image and the OCRed text. Jörn
Re: Clarifying when the Cas Editor needs the special nature, and when it needs the Corpus Explorer
Jörn Kottmann wrote: Marshall Schor wrote: The Cas Editor seems to be enabled by two different things in Eclipse. One is the Corpus Explorer view, which among other things, enables certain right-click menu items. The other is the natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature, although I'm not sure what it enables. Actually the Corpus Explorer only works together with projects which have the NLPProject nature. Non NLPProject nature projects are only displayed like they would be in the eclipse navigator view. The special right-click menu items and project structure is only available in NLPProject nature projects. Hmmm, I tried the following: In a new workspace, I created 2 projects - a java project and an NLP project. The java project did not have the NLPProject nature. Then I switched to the Corpus Explorer, and found when I right-clicked the two projects and picked properties, I saw the panel with Processor Folders, Corpus Folders, etc. (Even for the project that didn't have the NLP Project nature) So I guess that the NLP Nature isn't required to show this. But it may be required for something else Now days I think the eclipse Project Explorer could replace the Corpus Explorer view. To help users get started, I think the tooling chapter for the Cas Editor should say to either add the natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature to an existing project or / and switch to the Corpus Explorer view for that project, and / or create a new project using the wizard for a Cas Editor project. Do all three approaches work? There is no ui to add the nature to an existing project, but could be simply added. The only way it works right now is to create an NLP project and then use the Corpus Explorer view to set it up, e.g. adding the special folders, specify the type system, adding CASes, etc. I see there is a method in the class NlpProject called addNLPNature which adds this nature to a project - is there a way to invoke this from the Eclipse menus to do this for an existing project? If not, perhaps we could make use of the existing menu for PEARs which adds a menu pick called add UIMA nature and make it have sub-menus - one for the CasEditor, and one for the PEAR. Yes, would be a simple action which invokes the method. Jörn
Re: Aligning the Cas Editor nature name
Jörn Kottmann wrote: Marshall Schor wrote: Should the nature for enabling the Cas Editor, natureorg.apache.uima.caseditor.NLPProject/nature be better specified as org.apache.uima.CasEditor? That would break backward compatibility and since I planned to completely refactor/rewrite the project model code I would prefer to rename it then after the 2.3.0 release. OK. -Marshall Here's my thinking: UIMA in general is used for unstructured information - which may be text / language related, or may be other kinds of things, such as image data, audio recordings, etc., not related to NLP - Natural Language Processing. The Cas Editor (I think) is able to look at and edit CASes that may have nothing to do with Natural Language Processing (is this right?). Yes, I planned to add support for other SOFA types than plain/text e.g. for images. Image support together with multi SOFA support could be used to inspect/display a CAS which contains a scanned page as image and the OCRed text. Jörn
Re: Cas Editor Eclipse naming
Jörn Kottmann wrote: Marshall Schor wrote: I was testing the Cas Editor plugin, as a new naive user. There is nothing in the documentation that says to create one or more new projects, of a special type, for use by the Cas Editor - so I was trying to use a plain Java project, and of course, nothing was working. Part of the problem is that the label for the Cas Editor things in Eclipse is NLP. I did not recognize or associate that with either UIMA or the Cas Editor. (So, for instance, if you say in Eclipse, menu - file - new - other you get a pick list with lots of things, including one labeled NLP. Same with menu - window - show view - other same NLP entry.) I think we should rename this categorization tag to something that uses the words Uima, and CasEditor - maybe it should be a 2 level categorization, the top one being UIMA (which already exists, and is used by the Component Descriptor Editor), and a then CasEditor. WDYT? (What do you think)? You are right Marshall, they should be renamed to something which is appropriate now, the naming is a left over from the first days of the Cas Editor. The reason they were not renamed yet for the 2.3.0 release is that we should start a bigger refactoring effort to remove the project model from the Cas Editor plugin and create a new plugin based on it which helps users developing UIMA applications. A while back we decided to do this after the 2.3.0 release. Changing the names is not a big deal, but we should take into account that they might be changed again for the release after 2.3.0. +1 for the naming you suggested. If it's quick to do, maybe we should rename this for the 2.3.0 release. In any case, I think we need a paragraph in the documentation at the beginning to tell the user he needs to create a Cas Editor project using the wizard, before he can use the Cas Editor - that it only works in that context. -Marshall Jörn
