WebAnno User Guide

Alternatively, you can start WebAnno from the command line, in particular if you wish to provide it with additional memory (here 1 GB) or if you want it to store its data in a different folder.

Mind to replace /my/webanno/home with path of a folder where WebAnno can store its data.

By default the server starts on port 8080 an you can access it via a browser at http://localhost:8080 after you started it. You can add the parameter --httpPort=9999 at the end of the command line to start the server on port 9999 (or choose any other port).

A full list of the command line parameters can be found in the Winstone documentation.

Before any upgrade, make a copy of your WebAnno home folder.

When navigating to the Annotation page, a dialogue opens that allows you to select a project, and a document within the project. If you want to open a different project or document later, click on Open button to open the dialog.

Projects appear as folders, and contain the documents of the project. Double-click on a document to open it for annotation. Document names written in black show that the document has not been opened by the current user, blue font means that it has already been opened, whereas red font indicates that the document has already been marked as done.

Once the document is opened, a default of 10 sentences are loaded on the annotation page. The Settings button will allow you to specify the settings of you the annotation layer.

The first option allows you to select an Annotation Layer you are displayed during annotation. The second option allows you to specify the number of sentences that will be displayed on one page. The last option allows you to select auto-scroll while annotating. Auto-scroll scrolls automatically forward by putting the last annotated sentence in the middle.

Sentence numbers on the left side of the annotation page shows the exact sentence numbers in the document.

The arrow buttons first page, next page, previous page, last page, and go to page allow you to navigate accordingly. The Prev. and Next buttons in the Document frame allow you to go to the previous or next document on your project list. You can also use the following keyboard assignments in order to navigate only using your keyboard.

A click on the Help button displays the Guidelines for the tool and The Annotator’s Guide to NER-Annotation. When you are finished with annotating or curating a document, please click on the Done button, so that the document may be further processed. If the button above the Done is a cross symbol, it means the documents has already been finished. If the symbol has a tick, it is still open.

Annotation of spans works by selecting the span, or double-clicking on a word. This opens the annotation dialog, where you can add a new annotation. The layer can be selected on the left side of the frame. The tag can be selected out of the right box, containing the tags of the tagset. One can also type in the initial letters and chose the needed tag. In the case of lemma annotation, a lemma can be typed into the box on the right.

To change or delete an annotation, double-click on the annotation (span or link annotations).

Link annotations (between POS tags) are created by selecting the starting POS-tag, then dragging the arrow to connect it to its target POS tag. All possible targets are highlighted.

Annotations are always immediately persistent in the backend database. Thus, it is not necessary to save the annotations explicitly. Also, losing the connection through network issues or timeouts does not cause data loss. To obtain a local copy of the current document, click on export button. The following frame will appear:

Choose your preferred format. Please take note of the facts that the plain text format does not contain any annotations and that the files in the binary format need to be unpacked before further usage. For further information on the formats provided in WebAnno, please consult the corresponding chapter [OutputFormat WebAnno’s supported formats].

The document will be saved to your local disk, and can be re-imported via adding the document to a project by a project administrator. Please export your data periodically, at least when finishing a document or not continuing annotations for an extended period of time.

Concerning annotation, WebAnno offers six pre-defined layers: Span annotations support NE, lemma, POS, and co-referance. Several annotation layers may be selected.

Moreover, additional custom layers may be created, as described in Layers in detail.

For example, for NE annotation, select the options as shown below (red check mark):

NE annotation can be chosen from a tagset and can span over several tokens within one sentence. Nested NE annotations are also possible (in the example below: "Frankfurter" in "Frankfurter FC").

Lemma annotation, as shown below, is freely selectable over a single token.

POS can be chosen over one token out of a tagset.

Co-reference annotation can be made over several tokens within one sentence. A single token sequence have several co-ref spans simultaneously.

The other kind of annotation that is supported by WebAnno is Arc. The arcs can be made within one sentence and their types are chosen out of a tagset. Dependency arcs are defined between POS. Every POS is allowed to have only one head. Co-reference arcs are defined between co-reference-anchors. All transitively combined anchors build a colour-coded lexical chain.

After clicking on Create Project on the Projects page, select automation as your project type. The detailed description may be found in Projects.

The documents, that are to be annotated, have to be uploaded in the frame Documents. Please make sure that the chosen format corresponds to the format of the files you are uploading.

To manage the automation process, choose the Automation frame. The following frame will appear:

First choose your target layer in the Select automation layer frame. If you want to train a non-custom layer, please make sure you created or imported it in the Layer frame (for instructions to do so, see Projects).

Here you may choose the format of the target layer and optionally add some feature layers on which you want to train.

In the tab Target layer you may upload training files containing the target layer in WebAnno Export formats (WebAnno CPH TEI reader, plain text, binary format, XMI format, old WebAnno Format, WebAnno Format, Weblicht TCF Format, for more information on these formats, see [https://code.google.com/p/webanno/wiki/Format?ts=1407336468&updated=Format Format]).

In the next tab TAB-SEP target, you may upload training files containing the target layer in a tab-separated format, which is structured by writing each single word in a line together with its target tag, separated by a tab. Sentences are separated by blank lines.

The same goes analogically for the feature layers. The Other layers tab gives the possibility to upload WebAnno Export formats and choosing the layers that are to be used in training in the format window. The TAB-SEP feature tab gives the possibility to upload files in the above described tab-separated format, containing the feature tags in the second column. Every file will be regarded as one separate feature.

After choosing the training files, uploading them in the right format and importing them (by clicking on Import), every file will be displayed in the corresponding tab in the frame Documents. Click on the button Start Automation on the left, when you have uploaded your training data. Be prepared to wait for some time, as automation is a non-trivial process.

You can see that the automation has finished either by the fact that the Start Automation button is enabled again, or on the Monitoring page, by choosing the project in Monitoring and looking at the progress shown in the Training results /status frame.

To see the tags that were automatically created during the previously described, go to Home and choose the Automation page. Then select a project and a file, analogically to Annotation. The page, which is demonstrated below will be displayed. The navigation, export and the marking of finished documents is the same as in Annotation.

In the lower part, you see two horizontal frames, the lower one showing the automatically created annotation. By clicking on the tags, they are selected and therefore appear in the upper frame Annotation. You may see that selected tags turn grey in the Automation frame and blue in the Annotation frame. You may also add new tags to the Annotation, just like on the Annotation page.

After clicking on Users, you are displayed a new pane in which you can add new users by clicking on the button Add User. After doing so, you get a list of users in the system which can be added to the project. By making a tick in front of the log in you can chose a new user.

Please do not forget to save after choosing all members of the project. Close the pane by clicking on Cancel. The rights of users created like this are that of an annotator. If you want to expand the user’s status, you can do so by clicking on the user and then on Change permission. The following frame will pop up.

After ticking the wished permissions, click update. To remove a user, click on the login and then Remove User.

To add or delete documents, you have to click on the tab Documents in the project pane. Two frames will be displayed. In the first frame you can import new documents.

Choose a document by clicking on Choose files. Please mind the format, which you have to choose above. Then click on Import document. The imported documents can be seen in the frame below. To delete a document from the project, you have to click on it and then click on Delete in the right lower corner.

To administer the layers, click on Layer. A frame showing all existing layers in this project will appear. There are a couple of built-in layers.

The colouring of the layers signal the following:

By default, only the default layer will be displayed as enabled. To disable a layer, which means that it will not be shown to the users of the project, first select the layer by clicking on it. The following frames will open.

In the first frame, there is field Enabled, which can be ticked or unticked. By unticking the field it can be made invisible to the users. Layers cannot simply be deleted.

To administer the tagsets, click on the tab Tagsets in the project pane.

To administer one of the existing tagsets, select it by a click. Then, the tagset characteristics are displayed.

In the Frame Tagset details, you can change them, export a tagset, save the changes you made on it or delete it by clicking on Delete tagSet. To change an individual tag, you select one in the list displayed in the frame Tags. You can then change its description or name or delete it by clicking Delete tag in Tag details. Please do not forget to save your changes by clicking on Save tag. To add a new tag, you have to click on Create tag in Tag details. Then you add the name and the description, which is optional. Again, do not forget to click Save tag or else the new tag will not be created.

To create an own tagset, click on Create tagset and fill in the fields that will be displayed in the new frame. Only the first field is obligatory. Adding new tags works the same way as described for already existing tagsets. If you want to have a free annotation, as it could be used for lemma or meta information annotation, do not add any tags.

To export a tagset, choose the format of the export at the bottom of the frame and click Export tagset.

To add or delete guidelines, which will be accessible by users in the project, you have to select the tab Guidelines. Two new frames will be displayed. To upload guidelines, click on Choose files in the first frame – Add guideline document, select a file from your local disc and then click Import guidelines.

Uploaded guidelines are displayed in the second frame – Guideline documents. To delete a guideline document, click on it and then on Delete in the right lower corner of the frame.

Projects are associated with the accounts of users that act as project managers, annotators, or curators. When importing a previously exported project, you can choose to automatically generate missing users (enabled by default). If this option is disabled, projects still maintain their association to users by name. If the respective user accounts are created manually after the import, the users will start showing up in the projects.

WebAnno offers two modes of exporting projects:

The format of the exported annotations is selected using the Format drop-down field. When AUTO is selected, the file format corresponds to the format of the source document. If WebAnno has not write support for the source format, the file is exported in the WebAnno TSV format instead.

When exporting a whole project, the structure of the exported ZIP file is a follows:

Currently, WebAnno does not allow the user to choose a specific format for bulk-exporting annotations. However, this mailing list post describes how DKPro Core can be used to transform the UIMA CAS formats into alternative formats.

The following table will explain the different symbols, which explain the status of a document for a user and the described task.

You can also alter the document status of annotators. By clicking on the symbols you can change between Done and In Progress. You can also alter between New and Locked status. The second column of the document status frame displays the status of the curation.

As there is only one curator for one document, curation is not divided into individual curators.

Scrolling down, two further frames become visible. The left one, named Layer, allows you to chose a layer in which pairwise kappa agreement between annotators will be calculated.

Agreement can be inspected on a per-feature basis and it is calculates pair-wise between all annotators across all document. Agreement is calculated using Cohen’s kappa as implemented in DKPro Statistics.

The first time a feature is selected for agreement inspection, it takes a moment to calculate the differences between the annotated documents. Switching between different features subsequently is much faster.