JavaNLP Meeting Notes 10/15/03

Updates:

Util:
Added CircleList and PaddedList to util (Chris)
Wrote CharactersUtil, InvertingMaps, EditDistance, LanguageModel, need to
commit to CVS (Dan)

JavaDocs:

- Use them!  It helps people use your code.
- @link:
  syntax: {@link <class>#<method name or signature> <displayed
form>}
	so I could write "Initializes using {@link MyClass#init(boolean)
- MyClass#init(true)}" and it will appears as
  "Initializes using MyClass.init(bool)" - pretty neat, huh?

JavaNLP dependencies:

Issue:
- lots of circular dependencies between packages in JavaNLP
- problematic for targeted compiling using Ant
- why is Word in Trees? Document in dbm?

Proposals:
- util should probably be dependency-free, io should be almost
dependency-free
- two options for Word/Document issue:
  1. Move Label-like stuff like Word to labels package, Document-like
  stuff to document package
  Pros: very modular and intuitive
  Cons: many classes depend on trees, and now will have to import trees
  plus the new package

  2. Move Document to trees, and maybe rename as ling?
  Pros: only need to import one package
  Cons: trees is a big package to include

  - both options will eliminate the circular dependency between dbm and
    trees
    - a lot of the document stuff looks like trees stuff
    e.g. DocumentCollection vs. TreeBank

Action Items:
- eliminate util and io dependencies (Huy)
- understand Document/Document Readers and report to group (Jenny) - will
be helpful to reorganization, especially if
  we end up merging with DocumentCollection with Treebank