Using the UI

The Web UI that comes with MAT is a rich, logging-enabled tool for viewing, processing and annotating your documents. We describe how to use it here.

We assume that you've started the Web server and the UI.

Note: because of its current implementation, the UI can become extremely sluggish with large files. We have found that ~100K is the practical limit for raw documents given current browser and JavaScript implementations.

The initial screen

The initial UI screen displays a greeting, and is then blank except for the background and the top menubar:


The menubar has five elements:

The file menu

The file menu looks like this:


The three things you can do from this menu are:

Each of these operations brings up a dialog so you can proceed.

The show/hide menu

The show/hide menu looks like this:


This menu is initially blank. It lists all windows which have been opened and not closed. If the window is currently visible, the menu presents an option to hide that window; if the window is currently hidden, the menu presents the option to show that window. The show/hide menu is the only way to show a hidden window; to hide a visible window, you can use this menu or select the "-" icon in the upper right corner of the window.

The logging menu

The logging menu looks like this:


If logging is not started, "Start" will be enabled but not "Stop"; once "Start" is selected, "Stop" will be enabled  but not "Start", until "Stop" is selected. When "Stop" is selected, the browser downloads a CSV log of your interaction whose format is described here.

Loading and viewing files in file mode

The "Load document" dialog

When you select "File -> Open file...", you'll be presented with the following dialog:


The "Task" menu will be active, and the "Workflow" and "Input" elements will be disabled. Once you select an item from the "Task" menu, the "Workflow" menu will be enabled; once you select a workflow, the "Input" element will be enabled. If MAT knows of only one element for either the task or the workflow, those elements will be automatically selected for you.

Select the appropriate document type and encoding for the document. If the document is a raw document, select "raw" from the "Document type" menu; otherwise, select "mat-json" for rich annotated documents (other document types may also be available). The encoding for MAT JSON documents will be fixed as utf-8. Once you've filled out the appropriate elements, the "Open" button will be enabled:


If you press the "Open" button, the dialog will vanish and you'll see a document window.

The file mode document window

The document window looks like this:


The title bar of the document window contains the basename of the document, along with the task associated with the document window, in parentheses. At the right end of the title bar, there are two icons. The "-" hides the document, and the "x" closes it; you can make a hidden document visible again using the show/hide menu. You can move the document window around the desktop by clicking left on the title bar and holding down the mouse button; the mouse icon should become a hand. You can resize the window by selecting and dragging the three diagonal lines in the lower right corner.

Immediately below the title bar, the "Workflow" menu allows you to change the workflow. Immediate below that menu is the "Status" line, which contains each of the steps in the workflow; steps which are finished will be grayed out. To the right of the status line are three buttons:

Below the status line, on the left, you see a document pane containing the document; on the right, you see a tag legend. Above the document pane, you see two buttons: "Save mat-json" and "Save raw". If the document you loaded is a raw file, "Save raw" will be disabled. If you press one of these buttons, the browser will download and save the appropriate version of the file you're currently viewing.

At the bottom, there's a tagging status line which provides information about tagging; in the image above, it says "Hand annotation unavailable".

Here's another view of the document window, after two steps (zone and tokenize) have been applied by pressing the forward button:


The document now displays the token boundaries, and the tagging status line now reads "Hand annotation available (swipe or left-click)".

Annotating

Whenever the tagging status line reads "Hand annotation available (swipe or left-click)", you may edit the content annotations for your document.

Adding an annotation

To add an annotation, either swipe or right-click in the document text where there are no content annotations. Swiping selects a range of tokens; right-clicking selects a single token. In this example, we've swiped:


The annotation menu pops up automatically. In this example, where the text is previously unannotated, the menu contains, for each content annotation, the option to add that annotation. The menu items are styled with the same CSS that the resulting annotation will be styled with. Optionally, the menu may present a keyboard accelerator; here, if you press "P" when the menu is visible, it's identical to selecting "Add PERSON" from the annotation menu. The result is shown here:


Note, too, that now that the first annotation has been added, the tagging status line reads "Hand annotation underway" instead of "Hand annotation available". If you place your mouse over the annotation you've added, the tagging status line changes to show the name of the annotation:


And now that you've added an annotation, your annotation popup will provide the option of repeating the last annotation. If, say, you move on to annotate "Pakistan" as a location in the third line, and then make another selection, you'll see "Repeat LOCATION" as an option in your annotation popup:


Note that this option always has the keyboard accelerator "=". So in this case, you can mark this next occurrence of "Pakistan" as a location either by pressing the "L" or "=" keys, or by selecting "Add LOCATION" or "Repeat LOCATION" from the annotation popup menu.

Removing an annotation

To remove an annotation, swipe or left-click over the annotation:


A swipe will select a specific region; a left-click will select the region corresponding to the annotation under the click.

From the menu, select "Unmark", or press the <tab> key. Any annotation that overlaps the selected area will be removed.

Modifying an annotation

To modify an annotation, swipe or left-click the text span you want to be annotated. From the menu, select a new annotation. All annotations overlapping the selected text span will be removed, and the new annotation will be added for just the selected text span.

Autotagging

You'll notice, above, that when you select an already-annotated span of text, the popup menu contains not just the options to replace or remove, but also to "Autotag matches". If you select this option, all the eligible spans in the text which are not yet marked and match the existing span will be assigned the same annotation label as the already-annotated span. If you select a span of text which covers multiple annotated segments, the autotag process will be applied to each annotated segment. Autotagging has the following properties:

Loading and interacting with workspaces

Only a subset of workspace actions are available in the MAT UI; you can view the contents of folders and apply operations to individual documents in workspace folders, but you can't create workspaces, import documents into the workspace, or apply folder-level operations.

The "Open workspace" dialog

When you select "File -> Open workspace..." you'll be presented with the following dialog:


The first step is to copy the workspace key from the MATWeb command loop. Once the workspace key is inserted into the "Workspace key" field, you may press the <tab> key in that field to enable the "Directory" field; once the pathname of the workspace directory is entered in the "Directory" field, you may press the <tab> key in that field to enable the "Open" button:


If you only want to view the workspace, and don't plan on perfoming any operations, select the "read-only" checkbox.

Note: the value of the "Directory" field depends on how the MATWeb server was started. By default, it should be a full pathname, as shown. However, it MATWeb was started up with any --workspace_container_directory options, this value must be a partial pathname, representing a subdirectory of one of the workspace container directories. This limitation is intended to provide a measure of security when MATWeb is being used as a persistent service.

The workspace window

Initially, the workspace window looks like this:


This window can be closed, hidden, moved and resized in the same way the document window can.

The title bar shows the pathname of the workspace. Immediately below the title bar, the task associated with the workspace is shown, and immediately below that, you see a drop-down menu which allows you to select a workspace folder. Immediately to the right of the folder menu is a "Refresh" button; you may press this to resynchronize the workspace view with the workspace itself if you ever perform workspace actions on the command-line while the workspace window is open.

If you select a folder, you'll see a scrollable list of files in that folder, or "Folder is empty" if the folder is empty:


If you click once on an element in the file list, it will open a workspace mode document window.

The workspace mode document window

The workspace mode document window is very similar to the file mode document window:


It can be closed, hidden, moved and resized in the same way the document window can. It, too, has a document pane, a tag legend,  and a tag status line at the bottom. However, it differs otherwise.

The title bar contains the basename of the file, along with the workspace it's drawn from in parentheses. Immediately below the title bar is the current folder, and immediately below that a drop-down menu of operations available in this folder, and to the right of this drop-down menu, a "Go!" button which performs the selected operation. There are no options to save the document to the client desktop, no workflow, and no steps.

When you press the "Go!" button, the workspace applies the selected operation to the selected document, and as a result, the document might change folders. For instance, in the example above, the result of pressing the "Go!" button looks like this:


The document is now in the "in process" folder, and hand annotation is available. If the document moved from one folder to another, and either of the affected folders is displayed in the workspace window, the workspace window will be updated.

Annotating the document is identical to the annotating a document in file mode.

The "Update workspace key" dialog

Finally, if you've happened to shut down and restart the Web server while the UI is open, you might be in a situation where you want to continue working, but the Web server has presented a new workspace key. If you select "File -> Update workspace key", you'll be presented with the following dialog:


If you enter the new workspace key and press the "OK" button, the UI will now be able to continue to interact with the workspaces via the UI without restarting.