TableTrans, MultiTrans, InterTrans and TreeTrans: Diverse Tools Built on the Annotation Graph Toolkit

TL;DR

This paper presents four diverse linguistic annotation tools built on a common software library, demonstrating how a shared architecture and API facilitate the development and reuse of complex annotation applications for time-series data.

Contribution

The paper introduces four new tools for linguistic annotation, all based on a unified toolkit and architecture, enhancing reusability and development efficiency.

Findings

Tools support various linguistic annotation tasks.

Shared architecture simplifies development and integration.

Demonstrates effective reuse of software components.

Abstract

Four diverse tools built on the Annotation Graph Toolkit are described. Each tool associates linguistic codes and structures with time-series data. All are based on the same software library and tool architecture. TableTrans is for observational coding, using a spreadsheet whose rows are aligned to a signal. MultiTrans is for transcribing multi-party communicative interactions recorded using multi-channel signals. InterTrans is for creating interlinear text aligned to audio. TreeTrans is for creating and manipulating syntactic trees. This work demonstrates that the development of diverse tools and re-use of software components is greatly facilitated by a common high-level application programming interface for representing the data and managing input/output, together with a common architecture for managing the interaction of multiple components.