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Getting started with Atomic (Preview Release Dec 2013)

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Stephan Druskat edited this page Dec 24, 2013 · 17 revisions

Getting started with Atomic

This tutorial works with the 0.14 Preview Release from 23 Dec 2013. When trying out Atomic, please make allowance for the fact that it is work in progress. A fully functional version of Atomic will be available on 1 April 2014.

Install Atomic

  • Go to [http://linktype.iaa.uni-jena.de/atomic/](the Atomic homepage) and download the file suitable to your operating system. (Atomic is platform-independent, but needs a Java Runtime Environment version 1.6 or higher. This is installed on most computer by default.)

  • Extract the downloaded archive into a directory of your choice.

  • Navigate into the extracted directory and start Atomic by

    • double-clicking on the launcher file (atomic.exe in Windows, atomic.app in Mac OS X, atomic in Linux).

Create and annotate a new Atomic Project

  • On first start, you will be asked to pick a "workspace". This is a directory where your projects (and some settings) will be stored.

  • After having chosen a workspace, you will see the main application window.

<img src="https://github.com/infraling/atomic/wiki/getting-started/1.png" border="0" width=80%">

  • Create a new menu via the File menu (File > New project).
  • From the options in the pop-up window, choose New Atomic Project.

  • In the next step, pick a name for your project, and click on the "..." button to enter the following corpus text:

      Is this example more complicated than it appears to be?

  • Then, click on Finish. The corpus sentence is being tokenized, and a new project created.
  • In the navigation section on the left hand side, browse through the newly created project, and double-click on the file SaltProject.salt to open the graphical editor.

Let's get annotating!

  • In the AtomicAL Console (AtomicAL = "Atomic Annotation Language"), enter the following lines, pressing the Return key after each one.
a T1 POS:VBZ lemma:be
a T2 POS:DT lemma: this
a T3 POS:NN lemma:example

What is this? You have used AtomicAL to annotate the first three tokens in the sentence with part-of-speech and lemma. Note that you can annotate more than one element at a time by simply adding the respective IDs to the command chain. E.g., a T1 T2 T3 x:y will annotate tokens 1, 2, and 3 with "x:y".

  • Continue to annotate the tokens with POS and lemma. The AtomicAL syntax is simple, e.g., a (annotate) T3 (the element with ID T3) POS:NN (with the annotation [key]:[value]).
  • Let's try annotating using the tools palette on the right hand side of the editor: Click on the Span node tool to activate it, and then somewhere underneath the first token node. This will create a new span node, and activate the annotation field for this node. Enter an annotation of your choice (e.g., inf-struct:contrast-focus) and press CTRL+Return. This will write the annotation to the span node. If you want to enter more than one annotation, simply type each annotation key-value pair on a new line. Whenever you are finished, press CTRL+Return. In case you want to change the annotation, simply open the annotation editor by double-clicking on the respective annotation. If you want to enter or change more than one annotation at a time, select the respective element by clicking on its ID label (nodes) or anywhere on it (relations), and click again. This will open the multi-line annotation editor.
  • Connect the newly created span node with the first token, by clicking on the Spanning relation tool, then on the span node, and then on token 1. This will draw a spanning relation between the span node, and the token. Note that spanning relations can only go from a span node to a token.
  • Continue to create spans. Arrange the nodes you have created by selecting them and dragging them around with the mouse. Once you're finished, your editor could look similar to this:

<img src="https://github.com/infraling/atomic/wiki/getting-started/4.png" border="0" width=80%">

  • Let's draw a constituent tree now, once again with the help of AtomicAL. Use the command p (parent) to create parent nodes. The syntax for this command is very similar to the one for annotating elements: p (Draw a parent node over) T2 T3 (the elements with IDs T2 and T3) CONST:NP (and annotate them as constituting an NP, i.e., annotate the new parent node with CONST:NP).
  • Continue to create the constituent tree. While doing, you may experience nodes disappearing over the top edge of the editor window. To see the whole tree at once, adjust the zoom level by clicking on the editor window, and selecting Page from the zoom dropdown field (currently showing "100%"). This will fit the contents of the editor into the editor window.
  • Once you're finished building the tree, save your project by pressing CTRL+S, or selecting File > Save from the menu.

<img src="https://github.com/infraling/atomic/wiki/getting-started/5.png" border="0" width=80%">

This concludes a brief tutorial on the Atomic Preview Release. If you are interested in receiving updates about Atomic, please join the Atomic users mailing list (https://lserv.uni-jena.de/mailman/listinfo/atomic-user).

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