Cas Editor: group annotation types by namespace?

[Jens Grivolla <j+...@grivolla.net>]

Hi,

I was wondering if it wouldn't be more useful to group annotation types 
in the "mode" and similar menus by namespace rather than inheritance.

I don't think most users care much about supertypes, and mostly don't 
know about them, whereas the namespace seems to me to be a more natural 
way to organize the menus.

I think a flat top level with all used namespaces would work quite well, 
and the submenu with the annotation type names would not need to include 
the prefix.  What do you think?

Jens

Re: Cas Editor: group annotation types by namespace?

[Jens Grivolla <j+...@grivolla.net>]

On 05/10/2011 10:13 AM, Richard Eckart de Castilho wrote:
 >> [package names vs. type hierarchy]
> For a technically-oriented user, the package names are probably
> better. But for a linguist or knowledge-engineer, I am pretty sure
> that the inheritance hierarchy is more interesting. One dives down to
> the particular level one to which he can still make a distinction and
> then stops.

Yes, I guess that depends how you use the inheritance.  In our case we 
go from the general UIMA Annotation to our own generic Annotation type 
that adds a few features, then the generic "manual" Annotation with 
features specific to human annotations, etc.  So the inheritance is 
purely technical and implies no semantic hierarchy, and it makes no 
sense at all to a human annotator to go through all those levels that 
are completely meaningless to them.

> I think it would be good to offer both approaches, maybe on different
> key-bindings and/or different sub menus reachable from the context
> menu.

I agree that maintaining the old behaviour for your use case makes 
sense, so we would need either two menus or a project-wide preference.

Jens

Re: Cas Editor: group annotation types by namespace?

[Richard Eckart de Castilho <ec...@tk.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>]

For a technically-oriented user, the package names are probably better. But for a linguist or knowledge-engineer, I am pretty sure that the inheritance hierarchy is more interesting. One dives down to the particular level one to which he can still make a distinction and then stops.

I think it would be good to offer both approaches, maybe on different key-bindings and/or different sub menus reachable from the context menu.

Richard

Am 10.05.2011 um 09:55 schrieb Jörn Kottmann:

> On 5/9/11 1:29 PM, Jens Grivolla wrote:
>> I think a flat top level with all used namespaces would work quite 
>> well, and the submenu with the annotation type names would not need to 
>> include the prefix.  What do you think?
> 
> I think your proposed solution is good, because it works for simple and 
> complex type system, where
> the current solution is really limited when we have complex type 
> hierarchies.
> 
> Any other opinions?
> 
> Jörn
> 


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Richard Eckart de Castilho
Technical Lead
Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing Lab 
FB 20 Computer Science Department      
Technische Universität Darmstadt 
Hochschulstr. 10, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany 
phone [+49] (0)6151 16-7477, fax -5455, room S2/02/B117
eckartde@tk.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de 
www.ukp.tu-darmstadt.de 
Web Research at TU Darmstadt (WeRC) www.werc.tu-darmstadt.de
------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Re: Cas Editor: group annotation types by namespace?

[Jörn Kottmann <ko...@gmail.com>]

On 5/9/11 1:29 PM, Jens Grivolla wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if it wouldn't be more useful to group annotation 
> types in the "mode" and similar menus by namespace rather than 
> inheritance.
>
> I don't think most users care much about supertypes, and mostly don't 
> know about them, whereas the namespace seems to me to be a more 
> natural way to organize the menus.
>
> I think a flat top level with all used namespaces would work quite 
> well, and the submenu with the annotation type names would not need to 
> include the prefix.  What do you think?

I guess it depends a bit on the use case what is better. If you have a 
few super types, it
might be better to organize the menu with these, but if you have a lot 
and deep type hierarchies
it will get really confusing.

I think your proposed solution is good, because it works for simple and 
complex type system, where
the current solution is really limited when we have complex type 
hierarchies.

Any other opinions?

Jörn