Older versions and deprecated components

Pointing relations in feats

Up to PAULA XML version 1.0 it was possible to create pointing relations by assigning a feature annotation to a source node with the target node's URI as a feature value (in PAULA 0.9 only) or using the now deprecated @target attribute of the feat element (from PAULA 1.0). The use of @value for this purpose is illustrated in the example below.

A deprecated pointing relation Feat file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE paula SYSTEM "paula_feat.dtd">

<paula version="1.1">
    <header paula_id="mycorpus.doc1_coref" />
    <featList type="coref" xml:base="mycorpus.doc1.referent_Seg.xml" 
    xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
    <feat xlink:href="#referent_10" value="#referent_8" />
    </featList>

</paula>

The problem with this structure is that it is not unambiguously clear that the annotation signifies a pointing relation, rather than a label annotation that happens to resemble a URI (an annotation with the string value "#referent_8" in the example above). As of PAULA 1.1, rel files with their corresponding DTD should be used to define pointing relations, making the identification of source and target nodes unambiguous. It is still possible (though deprecated) to use a feat file for this purpose, as long as the pointing relation's target is marked using @target instead of @value. However, this will not be supported in future versions of the PAULA standard.

Virtual markables

In PAULA XML version 0.9 it was possible to define "virtual markables" which could span several markables, either in the same markable file or in any number of different markable files applying to the same tokenization. The following example illustrates such a file, where the virtual markable, designated by the @type "virtual", refers to two markables within the same file (the path mycorpus.doc5.referentSeg.xml must be specified since @xml:base is set to a separate tokenization file).

A mark file containing a pseudo-hierarchical markable of the deprecated "virtual" type.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE paula SYSTEM "paula_mark.dtd">

<paula version="1.1">
<header paula_id="mycorpus.doc5_referentSeg"/>

<markList xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" 
type="referent" xml:base="mycorpus.doc5.tok.xml">
 <!-- audio file span for the first 50 tokens -->
 <mark id="referentSeg_1" 
  xlink:href="#xpointer(id('tok_1')/range-to(id('tok_2')))"/>
 <mark id="referentSeg_2" 
  xlink:href="#xpointer(id('tok_5')/range-to(id('tok_8')))"/>
 <mark id="referentVirt_1"
  xlink:href="(mycorpus.doc5.referentSeg.xml#referentSeg_1,
  mycorpus.doc5.referentSeg.xml#referentSeg_2)" type="virtual"/>
</markList>

</paula>

Though virtual markables technically appear to be hierarchical structures by pointing at constituent markables, they are interpreted as flat spans which apply to exactly the same tokens as those covered by the constituent markables. Therefore the virtual markable in the example above is the same as a markable applying to tokens 1-2 and 5-8. The use of virtual markables has been deprecated and is no longer part of the current PAULA XML standard. Note that it is possible to create discontinuous spans using normal markables, by specifying discontinous ranges of tokens in the @xlink:href attribute.

Synopsis of older PAULA versions and components

This section lists distinctive characteristics of the different PAULA XML standard versions to date.

Version 0.9

Use of virtual markables is possible.
Use of feat attribute @value to specify pointing relation target nodes is possible/
No support for metadata.
Use of annoFeat is mandatory.

Version 1.0

Use of virtual markables is no longer possible.
Use of feat attribute @value or @target to specify pointing relation target nodes is possible.
No support for metadata.
Use of annoFeat is mandatory.

Version 1.1

Use of virtual markables is not possible.
Use of feat attribute @value to specify pointing relation target nodes is not possible.
Use of feat attribute @target to specify pointing relation target nodes is possible but deprecated.
New file type and element rel is recommended for the specification of pointing relations.
Support for metadata on the corpus, subcorpus and document levels.
Use of annoFeat is optional and deprecated.
Support for parallel corpora via pointing relations.
Support for aligned multimedia files.

PAULA XML Documentation