Meeting_2006-01-16

Meeting setup

Date: 16.01.2006
Time: 09.30 Norw. time
Place: Wherever we are : -)
Tools: iChat, SubEthaEdit

Agenda

Opening, agenda review
Reviewing the task list from two weeks ago
Documentation - divvun.no
Corpus gathering
Corpus infrastructure
Linguistics
name lexicon infrastructure
Other issues
Summary, task lists
Closing

1. Opening, agenda review, participants

Opened at 09: 45.

Present: Børre, Maaren, Saara, Sjur, Trond

Absent: Thomas, Tomi (sick leave until Jan. 17th)

Main secretary: Trond

Agenda accepted as is.

2. Reviewing the task list from the last meeting

Børre

Gather public texts, preferrably also parallel ones
Contact Odin editor (Ove Sæth) to ask for source (and parallel) documents
- Waiting for Trond
Continue converting text from input format to our xml
review code and documentation for corpus xsl files under version control
make an XML test lexicon for our new name lexicon; format is based on the latest meeting memo
- Some work done
fix bugs!

Maaren

work with risten.no
- done
review corpus usage documentation, and the usage of the corpus
- not done, do not know where to find it. Can`t read my emails...sorry....
discuss with relevant people regarding seminar on proofing tools, normativity and SGL in February/March, including place.
- done. Possible in February or at the beg. of March

Saara

Convert the name lexicon from present format to xml for testing; final conversion pending the editing fascilities
- Script is ready, the test conversion will be done today.
continue discussion on the new lexicon format
Refine language detection for Finnish
- not done
Finnish the review of the hyphenation detection.
- not done
Review the handling of xsl-files in corpus infrastructure, including version control
- work in progress. the updating xsl-files and cgi-infrastructure will be finished this week, the final testing during the meeting week.
Do some testing for bug #211
- not done
xml2lexc update to handle complex names: construct entries like we have now from the different parts of a complex name entry
- not done
update preprocess to handle inflected forms of complex names
- done but needs to be optimized.
fix bugs!

Sjur

Follow up the lawyer treatment of the contracts
- done
Plan the forthcoming seminar
- nothing but the dates and place
Lule Sámi twol problems, with Thomas and Trond
follow up on voice group-chat not working to Sámediggi
- Test Marratech when the new Marratech server is in place
project planning with Trond, continued
- also look at the development processes - specification and testing
Follow up on place names from Norge Digitalt
- write an e-mail to or call Bjørn Olav Megard
Evaluate SFST as speller (and analyzer) lexicon
- more thorough analysis than was possible in Guovdageaidnu
write a background document on the corpus contracts
continue proper name lexicon work and discussion
public tender:
- received offer for handling the whole process from Finnut Consult AS
follow up new server - it's not delivered yet
- it was delivered Friday afternoon
smj G3 issue with Thomas and Trond
sme G3 issue with Thomas and Trond
call EDD/ Christian Emil Ore about national place name lexicon
- tried calling him several times, but he has been ill, I've started on an e-mail to him instead
risten.no/name lexicon development: fix bugs, continue development
fix bugs!
various:
- commented a letter from Hallgeir Varsi to SD, regarding the amount of work needed on our side to support the Kvensk project
- wrote monthly reports for November, December

Thomas

Sick leave.

Tomi

Sick leave.

Trond

Contact Odin editor (Ove Sæth) to reopen contacts
- Forgot it.
Plan the forthcoming seminar
- Private thoughts, yes, must now flesh them out.
sign contract with Bibelselskapet for Norwegian parallel texts
- Not done.
project planning with Sjur, continued
- Not done.
smj G3 issue with Sjur and Thomas
- Not done.
sme G3 issue with Sjur and Thomas
- Not done.
document corpus infrastructure, your part
- Not done.
review corpus usage documentation (ccat)
- Not done.
discuss the new lexicon format in the newsgroup
- Not done.
fix bugs!
- Not done.
This revision was not too impressive, instead I have worked on disambiguation.

3. Documentation

Reviews

Add documentation on our corpus infrastructure and our corpus work in general ( Børre, Tomi, Trond). For the basic corpora, we need 2 additional types of documentation, or doc for 2 target groups:

For the users/linguists: What corpus are found, how do I use them (this info is now scattered) (Part of the HOWTO USE is documented in the catxml docu, what documents are found where etc + an overall documentation is not written, since the corpus is so sparsely populated)
1. catxml done, which is what is needed mostly. Do we need more?
2. Review: Thomas, Maaren, Linda, Ilona, Trond

Saara will update the user documentation, and add new if necessary. We will do the review as part of the meeting next week.

Findings so far: Basic text presentation works fine, but the text-type options does not.

4. Corpus gathering

Contracts

Ready - start using them!

Collecting

List of people/organisations/companies to contact to be found in an old meeting memo. Based on those, here's an updated list:

Anders Kintel (Børre)
Newspaper text:
1. Sámi Instituhtta's (for the old archive of Min Áigi and Áššu) (Børre)
2. Áššu has been making a CD since the end of May, there should be a pile there. Børre suggests that they send us the CDs they have, so that we may look at them, and ensure that the routines work, and that we are able to utilize their format. (Børre)
3. Min Áigi (Børre)
Commercially published texts
1. Iđut and key authors there (Børre)
2. Davvi Girji and key authors there (Børre)
3. Author organisations' meetings (Børre)
4. Key authors one by one
  1. (list of author names) Kerttu Vuolab, Kirsi Paltto, ...

List of texts with lower priority (to be gathered when the above list is more or less fixed)

the Sámi municipalities,
Authors with smaller production
Textbooks

TODO: a lot for Børre!

Odin

We want both parallell and errouneous (unproofed) text files. What we need is a direct contact with Odin, in order to have as good coverage as possible.

TODO: Trond, and then Børre to call Ove Sæth to re-establish contact.

Bible texts

We have received Norwegian texts and a contract draft from Bibelselskapet, in essence requiring a separate contract for internet use of extracts of the text. The texts are in the paratext format, an international standard for the bible in electronic form. Most translations are available in this format.

TODO: Trond will accept the contract as is, and then negotiate a separate contract with them for use with the online, searchable parallel corpus when it is ready.

5. Corpus infrastructure

Task list:

Include the xsl files under version control
1. RCS version control is almost finished, but an issue with access control is still open. Discussed a bit in the meeting, but nothing conclusive. We'll continue the discussion in the newsgroup.
Incorporate language detection as part of the corpus processing (Saara)
1. Almost finished. Needs improved Finnish language model - presently it isn't able to distinguish Finnish from Sámi (proving the family bonds: -)
we need to review whether only automatic hyphen detection is good enough, or whether manual post-processing in some form is needed. Delayed until we have some results to base the review on.
1. Acceptable results: 90% of all real hyphens correctly tagged.
CGI-admin script to add xsl-file to a corpus file that doesn't have one ( Tomi)
1. Saara will review the existing code, consult Tomi, and try to make a script to help Børre utilize the template and the infra in place.

We will have a major review of all these things next week.

6. Linguistics

North Sámi

three-part compounds issue still open
- Thomas is finished with three-part compounds for North Sámi.
  - compilation time has increased to 10m for the sme parser as a whole. This is probably linked to the three-part issue, but we are not sure about that.
  - it overgenerates wildly. This is bad for several of our applications.
- compound shortening issue is waiting for the SGL to make a normative decision
  - we have to wait until SGL´s meeting protocol (???) is ready
- linguistic analysis/discussion to continue in the newsgroup
- we should include the members-to-be of the Sámi Giellalávdegoddi (SGL) in this discussion, but how? We need a common meeting / normativity seminar / seminar on proofing issues and on language technology in a broader sense with them. Then we also need to open the linguistic issues newsgroup we talked about earlier, and set up their computers and teach them to use the newsgroup. This seminar needs to include the Lule Sámi section of SGL (others are welcome too).
  - Laila has informed the members of the SGL about this. This is very okei - open the linguistic issues newsgroup for the members of SGL, but we have to know how to do it. Seminar also very okei, but we have to wait until the new SGL is elected.
- Timetable:
  - The Sámediggiráđđi is going to appoint new members in January ( Johan Mikkel Saara is asking people)
  - not done yet, perhaps this week
  - Contact the SGL when it is elected, and ask them to arrange a normativity seminar, with invited keypersons. Have to wait until it is elected. Initially we planned for February, but it is too early, because SGL is not elected yet. Divvun wants the seminar as early as possible.
number project still open (see below)
diphthong simplification/G3 issue should be carried over from Lule Sámi.
- TODO:
  - Trond, Thomas and Sjur to discuss this this month.
  - Writing the rules (copy from smj, adjust) (Sjur, Thomas and Trond)
  - Bug 77 - clearify whether háliid is acceptable - it is found, thus we need to be able to analyse it, but only as !SUB:

Lule Sámi

Open tasks:

Derived G3 that looks like G2 are still open.
- Thomas, Trond and Sjur should meet again to finish the rest.

Numerals

The following North Sámi linguistic issues should be settled before going into the numeral project:

Three-part compounds
Diphthong simplification
Derivation

These issues are recently done in Lule Sámi, and it is more efficient to complete them in North Sámi directly thereafter instead of beginning a new topic

Numeral treatment is on different level in the existing sme and smj parsers, but the issue itself is common to the two langauges, and should therefore be treated in parallel.

Numerals in North Sámi: Inventory is listed elsewhere.

Numerals in Lule Sámi: There are 70 lines of code setting up the structure for case inflection of basic numerals.

7. Name lexicon infrastructure

Complex names

Task list for this issue:

make sure xml2lexc can handle complex names in ways compatible with our present tool chain (=reconstruct the lexc format we have now) (Saara)
- Tomi is working on a C++ version of the xml2lexc tool. He will put it into CVS soon (it is actually catxml, can easily be adopted to the xml2lexc requirements)
the resulting file format should be identical to our present prop-name file (=lexc), that can then be converted to our new xml format using the same script as for the regular names (Tomi or Saara, but only when the technical details are settled)
The core issue: The preprocess script can handle uninflected (A + B) compounds, but not (A + inflected B). Saara will add the analyzer as part of the preprocess, to be able to handle inflected cases as well.

XML format

We had our meeting, and the result was pretty close to the structure of the existing risten.no term base. Now the conversion script to xml needs to be updated. The new format is documented in the newsgroup.

Tasks:

make a test lexicon for evaluating the format, set up the editing, and test it ( Saara)
update conversion from lexc to xml to reflect new xml format (Saara)
1. mostly done, some open questions left
testing of conversion
continue the discussion of the name lexicon format ( Saara, Tomi, Sjur, Trond)
implement a prototype in eXist
eXist as editor:
1. develop the needed XQueries and interface
2. synchronisation between risten.no and
3. test whether eXist as editor is actually working well

8. Other

SGL Seminar

SGL/normativity seminar
- all members = potentially/likely all languages
  - not all languages, only North Sámi
- date? As early as possible, end of February/beginning of March
- place? Maaren will investigate

Divvun/Disamb Seminar in Tromsø

project meeting
- date: 23. (after lunch) - 27. (Friday is travelling day) januar.
- place: Tromsø
- still too many open questions regarding place+date, to be determined in a separate meeting later this week, when all are available.

Maaren is able to attend Monday morning and Tuesday (all day) Sjur will probably arrive in Tromsø at lunchtime Monday (7.25 from HKI, TOS at 11.00). Trond will check with Linda and Ilona, trying to have a Meeting startup after lunch on Monday. Saara will stay one day shorter/less, remember to adjust the schedule accordingly

Practical arrangements:

room(s): One big room for all, with internet access, and at least one additional room, with whiteboards or similar and projector.
lunch & coffee breaks, think of how to arrange this.
hotel = Grand Hotel/Polar Hotel, Grønnegata, Scandic is close to the University
- Sjur will check which ones are acceptable to SD
- these need rooms at the hotel: Ilona, Saara, Linda, Sjur, Maaren

Technical issues

The mac os / perl bug (at least Trond and Sjur has it, Bugzilla #211):
- utf8 "\xC4" does not map to Unicode at /Users/trond/gt/script/preprocess line 82. This msg did not show up in 10.3 (perl 5.8.1), but does so in 10.4 (perl 5.8.6). It is probably a perl - OS mismatch. (Trond, Saara, Tomi)
  - 10.4 introduced support for locales in the shell (10.3 and earlier didn't know about locales)
- Test: the result of the last line should indicate whether this is a problem in cat or a Perl/OS mismatch.

   preprocess file_name.txt OK
   cat file_name.txt | preprocess !!
   catxml file_name.xml | preprocess ??

After some heavy investigation, we got no further. There is no difference between different bash versions (2.0x, 3.0x), neither between different locales as long as they are UTF-8, and whether it is stored in LANG or LC_ALL.

One new insight though: both cat and print gives the same errors, thus indicating that the error is NOT strictly reltated to cat. Is it after all a conflict between the locale support in OS X and perl?

Bug fixing

29 open bugs (and 25 risten.no bugs)

C implementation of preprocess.pl

Do we want to have a C/C++ implementation for speed reasons? Is it going to be included in the spellers?

9. Summary, task list