If you just want an easier way to manipulate annotations, you can have a utility class that would have all methods separate from the annotation types Example code from http://decipher.chpc.utah.edu/nexus/index.html#nexus-search;classname~Annotationlibrarian <dependency> <groupId>gov.va.vinci</groupId> <artifactId>leo-annotation-librarian</artifactId> <version>2018.01.0</version> </dependency>
On Nov 15, 2019, at 10:58 AM, Marshall Schor <m...@schor.com> wrote: Even though the JCas classes can be generated from the XML file, you are allowed to add additional things to those source files, including - additional fields - additional methods See http://uima.apache.org/d/uimaj-2.10.4/references.html#ugr.ref.jcas.augmenting_generated_code -Marshall On 11/15/2019 9:50 AM, Alain Désilets wrote: On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 4:51 PM Richard Eckart de Castilho <r...@apache.org> wrote: Sure. You generate the JCas classes once and then you add the methods you want to them. Cf. e.g. https://github.com/dkpro/dkpro-core/blob/8043e10bf10a61fe47e21946ea609bda9f2278a0/dkpro-core-api-metadata-asl/src/main/java/de/tudarmstadt/ukp/dkpro/core/api/metadata/type/DocumentMetaData.java#L290-L447 I know how to create a subclass of Annotation, RelationAnnotation in my case. The problem is that if I try to use this subclass in an Annotator, UIMA complains that RelationAnnotation is not in the UIMA type system, and it lists the available types. This list is essentially the list of types defined in some UIMA xml file. This tells me that only those annotation classes defined in the xml file can be used in an Annotator. Or at least, that I am missing a step for registering my RelationAnnotation class with the UIMA type system. On the other hand, if I define the RelationAnnotation in the xml file, I can use it in an Annotator but then I can't figure out how to add methods to it, since the Java source for that class is generated automatically (by some UIMA maven plugin I presume). But the question is: why do you want to add new methods? (and is it really a good idea?) Essentially, I want to add methods for "derived attributes", i.e. attributes whose values are computed from primitive attributes defined in the xml file. I guess I could make those attributes be primitve (i.e. defined in the xml file), but then, any annotator that creates a RelationAnnotation would have to make sure to set those other attributes correctly. I would much rather have the RelationAnnotation class compute those derived attributes itself, as it garantees that they will always be computed the same way. Alain
