Instructions on how to use Wordfreak for Arabic Propbank annotation

Preparations:
WordFreak is deployed with Webstart. If your PC doesn't have Webstart installed, you need to install it before you can run wordfreak. You also need to have Java 1.4.x. Higher versions of Java have not been tested with WordFreak and therefore may or may not work. Windows XP generally has preinstalled Webstart and Java. If you have a Linux box you may need to set up webstart on your local machine to use web start to launch wordfreak. To do this, download javaws-1_0_1_02-linux-int.zip from here. Install java webstart following the instructions. Be sure to specify the correct java path on your machine.

Running WordFreak:
Fill your username and Wordfreak should fire up if everything is properly installed. Set font encoding to Arabic and choose an Arabic font. Set tag set to Arabic Treebank and you are ready to perform Propbank annotation. (This is important!!! Failure to do so may cause WordFreak to crash during annotation.)

Annotation:
(1) Add the preprocessed propbank file (extension .pb) using the "ADD" button.
(2) Click the "LOAD" button and a dialog box will appear. Fill in the verb you want to annotate. For example, if you want to annotated the verb "publish", key in "publish". The dialog box will disappear and you will see all the sentences that contain this verb.
(3) Select the appropriate verb and frameset with the drop-down list. At this point you need to use a web browser to consult the frame files. You can find the frame files for the Arabic Proposition Bank here
(4) Some annotation actions:
a. Select a tree node, choose the argument label from the Chooser. If you need to add a functional tag, select from the drop down list associated with that argument label.
b. Chain one argument to another (in the case of traces): Annotate the first node the way you normally would. Highlight the second node, hold the control key (or ALT key when you annotate discontinuous constituents), and click the argument label of the first node. The pieces of text will be chained together with * (or , in the case of discontinuous arguments).
c. Click the "-" tab to delete an annotation.
(5) After you finish the annotation of one verb, select "File->close->closeAll". Then you can move on to the next verb by repeating Step (2).

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