Document Browser

Starting in ANNIS3.1.X, it is possible to view a list of documents for each corpus and visualize documents independently of any queries posed by the user. To open the document browser for a corpus, click on the document icon in the corpus list next to each corpus. By default, a list as shown below is generated with a link to a plain text representation of each document.

The default configuration for the document browser is stored in the conf/document_browser.json file in the back-end configuration. It can be overwritten by a custom the document_browser.json file placed in the ExtData directory of a corpus.

Available keys are:

browse-documents=true|false
browse-document-visualizers= {...}

Note that the browse-documents configuration has only an effect when it is set within corpus.properties.

Automatic switch on/off

The ANNIS importer tries to detect corpora containing no underlying token text. This is usually case if some higher annotation layer is used to represent the base text, e.g. in dialogue corpora, where the token layer is used as an alignment base for annotations representing different speakers. If the text.annis import file contains only artificial token (which means there are only white spaces) the document browser is disabled. In the case there exists a document_browser.json file which configures the document browser it will never be disabled by ANNIS. Also if in the corpus.properties the browse-documents properties is set to true, the document browser will stay active.

Custom visualizer and sorting

It is also possible to use a custom visualizer for browsing a whole document. The configuration is in JSON-Syntax file named document_browser.json, which can be add to the ExtData directory of each corpus.

{
  "visualizers": [
    {
      "type": "htmldoc",
      "displayName": "diplomatic text",
      "mappings": "config:dipl"
    },
    {
      "type": "rstdoc",
      "displayName": "rhetorical structure"
    }
  ],
  "metaDataColumns": [
    {
      "namespace": "annis",
      "name": "title"
    },
    {
      "namespace": "annis",
      "name": "genre"
    }
  ],
  "orderBy": [
    {
      "namespace": "annis",
      "name": "title",
      "ascending": "false"
    }
  ]
}

Explanation in detail:

• visualizers - type: Defines which document visualizers are available for a corpus. All visualizer from the list above with the suffix "doc" in their name are suitable for using as doc visualizer.
• metaDataColumns (optional): For every defined metadata field an additional column is generated in the corpus browser table with the metadata key as a column header and the metadata value as the table cell value. This is useful for viewing, and sorting by, different metadata available to the documents. The line “namespace” can be left out if the namespace is null.
• orderBy (optional): In the default state the table is sorted by document name. Alternatively it is possible to define a custom sort by the metadata fields, even if the column is not visible. "namespace" and "ascending" are optional (if namespace is not specified, null is assumed). "ascending" is "true" by default.