SFST README


Installation (Unix and Linux only)
============

(Thanks to Robert Rathbone for suggestions which improved this README file.)

In order to install SFST you need the GNU version of the make program,
the GNU C++ compiler and the standard C++ library including the SGI
extensions hash_set and hash_map.

You might additionally need one or more of the following tools:

1) The "Flex" scanner generator which can be downloaded from:
   http://flex.sourceforge.net. Flex relies on m4 to function properly.
  
2) The "m4" macro processor which must be installed along with Flex.
   Download from: http://www.gnu.org/software/m4

3) The "Bison" parser generator available from http://www.gnu.org/software/bison

4) The "Ncurses" programming library available from http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses

5) Once they are installed you should be able to install SFST without
   any further problems.


After unpacking the software package, change to the source
directory and call

> make

to compile the tools. Then call

> make install

to install the tools in /usr/local/bin. Finally call

> make maninstall

to install the manpages in /usr/local/man/man1 and you are done.


The subdirectory data contains a simple example of an English
morphological analyser, the source code of the German SMOR morphology
(with just a few sample lexicon entries), and the general morphology
XMOR which may be used as a starting point for the development of a
computational morphology.


Problems with readline
----------------------

If you get an error message from the C++ compiler saying that it is
unable to find "readline/readline.h", you should install the GNU
readline package which is freely available at
http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/readline.html


Problems with hash_set and hash_map
-----------------------------------

If you get a message saying that hash_set and hash_map are not found,
you should uncomment the following line in the Makefile

#SGILIB = -DSGIext

If that does not help, make sure that hash_set and hash_map are
contained in your C++ libraries. Check in which subdirectory the
include files for hash_map and hash_set are located and to which name
space they are added. Then edit in the file alphabet.h the lines
starting with
  #ifdef SGIext ...
appropriately.


Usage
=====

See the manual SFST-Manual.pdf in the doc subdirectory and the man
pages for more information on the SFST tools. doc/SFST-Tutorial.pdf
explains how computational morphologies are implemented in SFST.

If you want to implement your own tools based on the SFST code, have a
look at fst-infl.C and fst-infl2.C. They show how analysers are
implemented with the standard (fst-infl) and the compact (fst-infl2)
transducer format.


Author
======

The SFST tools have been implemented by Helmut Schmid, Institute for
Computational Linguistics, University of Stuttgart, Germany and they
are available under the GNU public license version 2 or higher.


Bug reports
===========

Please send bug reports and other feedback to schmid@ims.uni-stuttgart.de.