The MIR Sentence Processing package contains the C source code for the MIR system, as well as a selection of scripts with the relevant training and testing data. MIR has been designed for rapid prototyping of typical architectures used in NLP research such as SRN and SOM which depend heavily on (one or more) lexicons, and can be easily extended to handle any other algorithms the user may be interested in. Because of the emphasis on rapid prototyping, the package is written in C using the TCL/TK libraries. Provided a number of basic commands and widgets, the user can quickly set up networks to test and train a variety of architectures. The use of the TCL scripting language extends the facility with which experiments can be run once an architecture has been designed, as well as manipulating and displaying interesting aspects of the design. TK provides the means to develop a graphical interface for purposes of visualizing not just the network and its components, but its dynamics as well. The TCL/TK extension BLT has proved very useful for this purpose.
The current implementation uses the TCL7.6 (tcl7.6p2.tar.gz) and TK4.2 (tk4.2p2.tar.gz) libraries (for more information on the release of TCL7.6/TK4.2, see the Scriptics home page). The software will also work with the BLT2.3 extension (BLT2.3.tar.gz), but its use is optional; visit the BLT site for general information about the BLT extension. An upgrade to TCL/TK8.0 is in the works.
A number of scripts, including sardsrn.tcl and semflip.tcl (see below for references to demos and papers), have been provided to illustrate how typical (as well as not-so-typical) networks can be constructed which use the commands and widgets in the MIR program. Click here for the README, which gives information on how to get, uncompress, and untar the package. (You can also download the software via the tar icon below.)
Demos of these scripts in action can be found at:
- The SARDSRN Sequential Network (sardsrn.tcl)
- Semantic Disambiguation in Sentence Processing (semflip.tcl)
Comments to martym@cs.utexas.edu
Version:
v1.0 10/27/98 martym