This is a tool for labeling text documents. Slate supports annotation at different scales (spans of characters, tokens, and lines, or a document) and of different types (free text, labels, and links). This covers a range of tasks, such as Part-of-Speech tagging, Named Entity Recognition, Text Classification (including Sentiment Analysis), Discourse Structure, and more.

Why use this tool over the range of other text annotation tools out there?

Fast
Trivial installation
Focuses all of the screen space on annotation (good for large fonts)
Terminal based, so it works in constrained environments (e.g. only allowed ssh access to a machine)
Not difficult to configure and modify

Note - this repository is not for the "Segment and Link-based Annotation Tool, Enhanced", which can be found here and was first presented at LREC 2010. See 'Citing' below for additional notes on that work.

Installation

Two options:

1. Install with pip

pip install slate-nlp

Then run from any directory in one of two ways:

slate
python -m slate

2. Or download and run without installing

Either download as a zip file:

curl https://codeload.github.com/jkkummerfeld/slate/zip/master -o "slate.zip"
unzip slate.zip
cd slate-master

Or clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/jkkummerfeld/slate
cd slate

Then run with either of:

python slate.py
./slate.py

To run from another directory, use:

python PATH_TO_SLATE/slate.py
PATH_TO_SLATE/slate.py

Requirements

The code requires only Python (2 or 3) and can be run out of the box. Your terminal must be at least 80 characters wide and 20 tall to use the tool.

Citing

If you use this tool in your work, please cite:

@InProceedings{acl19slate,
  title     = {SLATE: A Super-Lightweight Annotation Tool for Experts},
  author    = {Jonathan K. Kummerfeld},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: System Demonstrations},
  location  = {Florence, Italy},
  month     = {July},
  year      = {2019},
  pages     = {7--12},
  doi       = {10.18653/v1/P19-3002},
  url       = {https://aclweb.org/anthology/papers/P/P19/P19-3002/},
  software  = {https://jkk.name/slate},
}

While presenting this work at ACL I learned of another annotation tool called SLATE. That tool was first described in "Annotation Process Management Revisited", Kaplan et al. (LREC 2010) and then in "Slate - A Tool for Creating and Maintaining Annotated Corpora", Kaplan et al. (JLCL 2011). It takes a very different approach, using a web based interface that includes a suite of project management tools as well as annotation. The code it available at https://bitbucket.org/dainkaplan/slate/wiki/Home.

Getting Started

Note: if you used pip to install, reaplce python slate.py with slate everywhere below.

Run python slate.py <filename> to start annotating <filename> with labels over spans of tokens. The entire interface is contained in your terminal, there is no GUI. With command line arguments you can vary properties such as the type of annotation (labels or links) and scope of annotation (characters, tokens, lines, documents).

The input file should be plain text, organised however you like. Prepare the data with your favourite sentence splitting and/or tokenisation software (e.g., SpaCy). If you use Python 3 then unicode should be supported, but the code has not been tested extensively with non-English text (please share any issues!).

When you start the tool it displays a set of core commands by default. These are also specified below, along with additional commands.

The tool saves annotations in a separate file (<filename>.annotations by default, this can be varied with a file list as described below). Annotation files are formatted with one line per annotated item. The item is specified with a tuple of numbers. For labels, the item is followed by a hyphen and the list of labels. For links, there are two items on the line before the hyphen. For example, these are two annotation files, one for labels of token spans and the other for links between lines:

==> label.annotations <==
(2, 1) - label:a
((3, 5), (3, 8)) - label:a
(7, 8) - label:s label:a

==> link.annotations <==
13 0 - 
13 7 - 
16 7 -

A few notes:

The second label annotation is on a span of tokens, going from 5 to 8 on line 3.
The third label annotation has two labels.
The line annotations only have one number to specify the item.
When the same line is linked to multiple other lines, each link is a separate item.

Tutorials

Included in this repository are a set of interactive tutorials that teach you how to use the tool from within the tool itself.

Task	Command
Named Entity Recognition annotation	`python slate.py tutorial/ner.md -t categorical -s token -o -c ner-book.config -l log.tutorial.ner.txt -sl -sm`
Labelling spans of text in a document	`python slate.py tutorial/label.md -t categorical -s token -o -l log.tutorial.label.txt`
Linking lines in a document	`python slate.py tutorial/link.md -t link -s line -o -l log.tutorial.link.txt`

Example Workflow

This tool has already been used for two annotation efforts involving multiple annotators (Durrett et al., 2017 and Kummerfeld et al., 2018). Our workflow was as follows:

Create a repository containing (1) the annotation guide, (2) the data to be annotated divided into user-specific folders.
Each annotator downloaded slate and used it to do their annotations and commit the files to the repository.
Either the whole group or the project leader went through files that were annotated by multiple people, using the adjudication mode in the tool.

Comparing Annotations

The tool supports displaying annotations for the purpose of adjudicating disagreements. There are two steps involved. Specifically, you can request that a set of other annotation files be read. Then, whenever one of those annotation files includes something that your current adjudication does not, the text is shown in red.

Data list file creation

A data list file contains a series of lines in the format:

raw_file [output_file [cur_position [other_annotations]]]

For example, this line says there is a raw text file my-book.txt, that the adjudications should be saved in annotations-adjudicated.txt, that annotation should start at the very start of my-book.txt and that there are three existing annotations to be compared:

my-book.txt annotations-adjudicated.txt ((0, 0), (0, 0)) my-book.txt.annotations1 my-book.txt.annotations2 my-book.txt.annotations3

Note: you can have as many "other_annotation" files as you want.

Run slate with the data list file

Now run slate as follows:

python slate.py -d data-list-file [any other arguments]

Example

The tutorial folder contains two example data list files:

tutorial/data/list_with_disagreements.category.txt
tutorial/data/list_with_disagreements.link.txt

You can use them as follows:

cd tutorial/data
python ../../slate.py -d list_with_disagreements.category.txt -t categorical -s token

Efficiency Tip

You can save time by putting annotations that all annotators agreed on into the annotations-adjudicated.txt file. This bash pipeline will do that if you replace:

ANNOTATION_FILES with the names of all of your annotation files, separated by spaces
N_FILES with the number of annotation files you have

cat ANNOTATION_FILES | sort | uniq -c | awk -v count=N_FILES '$1 == count' | sed 's/^ *[0-9]* *//' > annotations-adjudicated.txt

Breaking this down, it does the following:

cat ANNOTATION_FILES , print the annotation files in the terminal
sort , sort their contents together
uniq -c , where there are consecutive lines that are the same, only keep one, and also indicate how many times each line occurred
awk -v count=N_FILES '$1 == count' , only keep lines where the number at the start matches N_FILES
sed 's/^ *[0-9]* *//' > annotations-adjudicated.txt, remove the number at the start of the line (placed there by the uniq command)

Detailed Usage Instructions

Invocation options

usage: slate.py [-h] [-d DATA_LIST [DATA_LIST ...]] [-t {categorical,link}]
                [-s {character,token,line,document}] [-c CONFIG_FILE] [-l LOG_PREFIX] [-ld]
                [-sh] [-sl] [-sp] [-sm] [-r] [-o] [-ps] [-pf] [--do-not-show-linked]
                [--alternate-comparisons]
                [data ...]

A tool for annotating text data.

positional arguments:
  data                  Files to be annotated

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d DATA_LIST [DATA_LIST ...], --data-list DATA_LIST [DATA_LIST ...]
                        Files containing lists of files to be annotated
  -t {categorical,link}, --ann-type {categorical,link}
                        The type of annotation being done.
  -s {character,token,line,document}, --ann-scope {character,token,line,document}
                        The scope of annotation being done.
  -c CONFIG_FILE, --config-file CONFIG_FILE
                        A file containing configuration information.
  -l LOG_PREFIX, --log-prefix LOG_PREFIX
                        Prefix for logging files
  -ld, --log-debug      Provide detailed logging.
  -sh, --show-help      Show help on startup.
  -sl, --show-legend    Start with legend showing.
  -sp, --show-progress  Start with progress showing.
  -sm, --show-mark      Start with mark showing.
  -r, --readonly        Do not allow changes or save annotations.
  -o, --overwrite       If they exist already, read and overwrite output files.
  -ps, --prevent-self-links
                        Prevent an item from being linked to itself.
  -pf, --prevent-forward-links
                        Prevent a link from an item to one after it.
  --do-not-show-linked  Do not have a special color to indicate any linked token.
  --alternate-comparisons
                        Activate alternative way of showing different annotations (one colour
                        per set of markings, rather than counts).

You may also define arguments in a file and pass them in as follows:

python slate.py @arguments.txt

Keybindings

The tool shows files one at a time in plain text. Default commands are shown below.

Note: special keys such as ENTER and BACKSPACE may not work on non-OS-X operating systems. That is why in all places where they are used we have an alternative as well.

Type	Key	Labelling Affect	Linking Affect
Movement	`j` or `←`	move to the left	move selected item to the left
	`i` or `↑`	move up a line	move selected item up a line
	`o` or `↓`	move down a line	move selected item down a line
	`;` or `→`	move to the right	move selected item to the right
	`J` or [`Shift` + `←`]	go to the start of the line	move linking item to the left
	`I` or [`Shift` + `↑`]	go to first line	move linking item up a line
	`O` or [`Shift` + `↓`]	go to last line	move linking item down a line
	`:` or [`Shift` + `→`]	go to the end of the line	move linking item to the right
Edit Span	`m`	extend left	extend selected item left
	`k`	contract left side	contract selected item left
	`/`	extend right	extend selected item right
	`l`	contract right side	contract selected item right
	`M`	-	extend linking item left
	`K`	-	contract linking item left
	`?`	-	extend linking item right
	`L`	-	contract linking item right
Label Annotation (default)	`Space` then `a`	[un]mark this item as a	-
	`Space` then `s`	[un]mark this item as s	-
	`Space` then `d`	[un]mark this item as d	-
	`Space` then `v`	[un]mark this item as v	-
Link Annotation	`d`	-	create a link and move right / down
	`D`	-	create a link
Either Annotation mode	`u`	undo annotation on this item	undo all annotations for the current item

Shared commands:

Type	Mode	Key	Affect
Searching	Normal	`\`	enter query editing mode
	Query	`?` or `Enter`	exit query editing mode
	Query	`!` or `Backspace`	delete last character in query
	Query	characters except `?` and `!`	add character to query
	Normal	`p`	go to previous match
	Normal	`n`	go to next match
	Normal	`P`	go to previous match for linking line
	Normal	`N`	go to next match for linking line
Assigning text labels	Normal	`t`	enter label editing mode
	Label	`?` or `Enter`	exit label editing mode and assign the label
	Label	`!` or `Backspace`	delete last character in label
	Label	characters except `?` and `!`	add character to label
Saving, exiting, etc	Normal	`]`	save and go to next file
	Normal	`[`	save and go to previous file
	Normal	`q`	save and quit
	Normal	`s`	save
	Normal	`Q`	quit
Misc	Normal	`#`	toggle line numbers
	Normal	`h`	toggle help info (default on)
	Normal	`{` or `PAGE-UP`	shift view up 5 lines
	Normal	`}` or `PAGE-DOWN`	shift view down 5 lines
	Normal	`>` then `p`	toggle showing progress through files
	Normal	`>` then `l`	toggle showing legend for labels
	Normal	`>` then `m`	toggle showing the mark on the current item

Misc

To annotate multiple files, specify more than one as an argument. For greater control, provide a list of files in a file specified with --data-list / -d. The list should be formatted as follows, where [] indicate optional values:

raw_file [annotation_file [starting_position [additional_annotation_files]]]

For example, these commands will create a file list, use it, then return to it later:

find . -name *txt > filenames_todo
./slate.py -d filenames_todo -l do_later
# ... do some work, then quit, go away, come back...
./slate.py -d do_later.todo -l do_even_later -o

Note, the -o flag is added so it will allow you to edit the annotations you have already created. Otherwise the system will complain that you are overwriting existing annotation files.

When the additional_annotation_files are included it activates an adjudication mode. By default, all annotations that appear in all additional files are added to the current annotations. Disagreements are coloured in the text, but will disappear once a decision is made (using the normal annotation commands).

Running in Windows

Users have reported a range of issues when trying to run slate:

Underlining, which is used to show the currently selected text, does not work.
Shift keys do not work

Here are a few things to try that others have found helpful:

Use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with Ubuntu
Reinstall ncurses, or install windows-curses
If you hit an encoding issue, try converting your raw text file to ASCII
Try powershell
Use a config file with different keybindings, to avoid needing shift

Customisation

Colours and keys are customisable. For labelling, the default is:

Underlined, current selected item
Green on black, 'a' items
Blue on black, 's' items
Magenta on black, 'd' items
Red on black, 'v' items
Cyan on black, multiple types for a single token

For linking, the default is:

Underlined, current selected item
Green on black, current linking item
Blue on black, item is linked to the current linking item
Yellow on black, item is in some link, though not with the current linking item

Modifying the Code

Slate has a relatively small codebase (~2,200 lines) and is designed to make adding new functionality not too hard. The code is divided up as follows:

annotate.py, the main program, this has the core loop that gets user input.
config.py, contains the default configuration, including colours and keyboard bindings.
data.py, classes to read, store and write data.
view.py, rendering the screen.

Logic for determining what colour goes where is split across two parts of the code. In data.py, the set of labels for an item is determined. In view.py, that set of labels is used to choose a suitable colour.

Adding a new command involves:

Adding the name and key to input_action_list in config.py
Adding a mapping from the name to a function in action_to_function in annotate.py
Adding or modifying a function in annotate.py
Modifying data.py or view.py to apply the action

Changing the label set / Adding labels

The label set is defined in your config file (see an example config here).

See lines like this for label definitions:

Label:          a                         SPACE_a green

The format is:

Label:        <label>                    <command> <colour>

You can add / edit / remove these lines to define your own label scheme. For example, for NER you may want to do:

Label:          O                         SPACE_a green
Label:          LOC                       SPACE_s blue
Label:          PER                       SPACE_d red
Label:          ORG                       SPACE_f yellow
Label:          MISC                      SPACE_v magenta

For an example of a custom config file, see ner-book.config

The current set of available colours is: [green, blue, white, cyan, magenta, red, yellow]. Note that by default white is used for regular text and cyan is used for cases where multiple labels apply to the same content.

To define more colours, edit the top of slate/config.py. By varying both the text colour (foreground) and background colour you can achieve quite a range of variations. You can also define any RGB colour you want using the curses init_color function and the init_pair function.

Questions

If you have a question please either:

Open an issue on github.
Mail me at jonathan.kummerfeld@sydney.edu.au.

Contributions

If you find a bug in the code, please submit an issue, or even better, a pull request with a fix.

Acknowledgments

This tool is based in part upon work supported by IBM under contract 4915012629, and by ONR under MURI grant N000140911081. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IBM.