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	PYCORNETTO README

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Pycornetto
Version 0.6

Copyright (C) 2008-2013 by Erwin Marsi and Tilburg University

https://github.com/emsrc/pycornetto
e.marsi@gmail.com


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	DESCRIPTION
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Pycornetto is a Python interface to the Cornetto database, 
a lexical-semantic database for Dutch 
(http://www.let.vu.nl/en/research/projects/index.asp#Cornetto). 
It allows you to ask questions about lexical-semantic relations between
words, such as "Is word X a synonym of word Y?", "What are the
hyponyms of the verb X?", etc.

There are basically four ways to use Pycornetto:
	
	(1) you can use it interactively from the command line of the 
	    Python interpreter
	(2) you can call it from your own Python code
	(3) you can run the database server and connect to it with 
	    the supplied client
	(4) you can run the database server and connect to it through XML-RPC

XML-RPC is a protocol for remote procedure calls, which means that you can
call functions on the server from every programming language which supports
XML-RPC (Python, Perl, Ruby, Javascript, PHP, C, C++, Objective C, Java, Lisp,
Haskell, .NET, ...).

IMPORTANT: This interface is useless without the Cornetto database which is
NOT included in this distribution. It is available from the TST Centrale (the
Dutch HLT Agency) at the following website:
http://tst-centrale.org/nl/producten/lexica/cornetto/7-56

Pycornetto offers a command line and client/server interface targeted at
"power users" who intend to use Cornetto for natural language processing. If
this profile does not suit you and you would prefer a graphical user interface,
you can use DEBVisDic for Cornetto available from http://deb.fi.muni.cz/index.php


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	LICENSE & USAGE
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Pycornetto is licensed under the GNU Public License. For detailed
license information see the file COPYING.


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	INSTALLATION
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Python packages are available from
https://github.com/emsrc/pycornetto/wiki/Python-Packages
For installation instruction see the file INSTALL.


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	USAGE
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For usage instruction see the file USAGE.


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    DOCUMENTATION
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All executable scripts are self-documenting: use the '-h' options. 

The script cornetto-client.py also offers online help when running. 
Just type "help()" 

Other documentation, including API reference information, is available by
running the script "pycornetto-help.py", which will open the main html page in
a browser window. Alternatively, use the --l" option to find out where this
documention is located on your system (this will only work after you have
installed Pycornetto using the setup.py command).


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    KNOWN ISSUES
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Some open queries, e.g., 'inst.ask("slang +")', result in a search explosion,
and may take practically forever. This is particularly problematic when
running in server mode, because the client has no way to interrupt a query.
There is currently no upper limit on the required time or the size of the
result. However, the function set_max_depth can be used to set a limit on the
maximal depth of searches for related lexical units where no relation name is
specified. In the Pycornetto server, this limit can be enforced through the
--max-depth command line option.


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	CONTACT
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For questions, bug reports or feature requests, please contact 
Erwin Marsi at e.marsi@gmail.com.


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	ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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This software was partly developed within the DAESO research project
(http://daeso.uvt.nl) funded by the Stevin programme
(http://taalunieversum.org/taal/technologie/stevin/)

Thanks to the Cornetto team for delivering an excellent lexical resource for
Dutch (http://www.let.vu.nl/onderzoek/projectsites/cornetto/)

Pycornetto's existence would be much harder without:

- the Python programming language (http://www.python.org/)
- the NetworkX Python package for creating and manipulating graphs and networks 
  (http://networkx.github.io)
- Steven Bethard's argparse module (http://code.google.com/p/argparse/) 
- Wingware's Python IDE (http://www.wingware.com/)

Thanks for (help with) fixing bugs:
- Frederik Vaassen
- Maarten van Gompel
- Lars Buitinck


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    PS
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If you found Pycornetto useful, or if you discover bugs or make improvements,
please let me know.

good luck!

Erwin