Perl Lingua::Wordnet
    Copyright (c) 1999,2000 Daniel Brian. All rights reserved.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of either:

    a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
    Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
    later version, or

    b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this kit.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See either
    the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this kit,
    in the file named "Artistic".  If not, you can get one from the Perl
    distribution. You should also have received a copy of the GNU General
    Public License, in the file named "Copying". If not, you can get one
    from the Perl distribution or else write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

    NOTE: Wordnet is not included in this package. It is copyrighted 
    by Princeton University (see http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/).



WARNING: This is a beta version. I have not extensively tested all
functionality, particularly those functions allowing writing to
the database. I know there are bugs. Please help me by finding them!


DESCRIPTION

Wordnet is a lexical reference system inspired by current 
psycholinguitics theories of human lexical memory. This module 
allows access to the Wordnet lexicon from Perl applications, as 
well as manipulation and extension of the lexicon. 
Lingua::Wordnet::Analysis provides numerous high-level 
extensions to the system.

Version 0.1 is a complete rewrite of the module in pure Perl, 
whereas the old module embedded the Wordnet C API functions. 
In order to use the module, the database files must first be 
converted to Berkeley DB files using the 'scripts/convertdb.pl' 
script.


REQUIREMENTS

Perl 5.005, Berkeley DB 1.*, Wordnet 1.6 are required. The Wordnet 
distribution does not need to be installed, but the data files 
must be accessible for creation of the new data files. Wordnet 
is available from http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/.


INSTALLATION

To configure and install, type:
 
  perl Makefile.PL

This will locate the Wordnet data directory and run the program 
'scripts/convertdb.pl' to rewrite the data in Berkeley DB 
format. It will also ask where you want to new data files stored 
(default is /usr/local/wordnet1.6/Lingua-Wordnet/). It will write
the following files, and will take quite a while:

    lingua_wordnet.index      - all indexes of all senses
    lingua_wordnet.data       - all data files combined
    lingua_wordnet.morph      - all exception data

The files will be large (about 40MB total), but loading time is nominal, and
searches are instant, since all data is mapped for lookup rather than scanned.
The format of the new database is accessible with Berkeley DB, and consists of
a hash mapping of each synset to a key, using the synset offset with the pos 
character as the key for a synset. Added synsets increment the synset offsets 
sequentially, but the original offsets are retained for legacy compatibility. 
Lingua::Wordnet will look for these files in the directory indicated at the 
start of the Wordnet.pm file. 

Then:

  make
  make test

The test will load the new Wordnet data files and run some tests
on them. If any tests fail, stop and find out why. Then as root:

  make install

This will install the module among your Perl modules and install 
the new data files. Since these are large, you should do a 
'make clean' after the install to delete the local copies.


DOCUMENTATION

You can access the Lingua::Wordnet documentation with:

  perldoc Lingua::Wordnet

There is additional documentation in the 'docs/' directory, and 
the scripts in 'scripts/' are fairly good references for 
examples.


WHAT THEN?

If you are not familiar with Wordnet you should download and 
read the "Five Papers" document at http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/.


EXTRA FILES

docs/terms.txt            - a brief summary of Wordnet terms
scripts/LWBrowser.pm      - an Apache/mod_perl module HTML font-end to 
                            Lingua::Wordnet.
scripts/report.pl         - generates statistics reports for databases